Organized gangs decimate Zimbabwe herds and may wipe out South Africa's endangered black rhinos within a decade. Ranchers trying to save the animals find heartbreak amid carcasses shorn of horns.

The baby rhino, an orphan, had barely been weaned. Her horn was only a few inches long. But that didn't stop the poachers from hacking it off.

The perfumed tablet's displacement from the RPI by the dribbling liquid dispenser won't wash if we want clean governance

A harsh blow to the reputation of one of civilisation's humblest boons was delivered yesterday by the Office for National Statistics. They have extracted the bar of soap from the basket of goods used to calculate the Consumer Prices Index and Retail Prices Index. It was done, of course, with the best of intentions – to more accurately chart changing consumer behaviour. Garlic bread is in and pitta out; hair straighteners are 2010 and hairdryers so 2009; throw your DVDs in the bin, unless of course you have a Blu-ray player. This is not the first time that soap has fallen foul of the government. The manufacture of soap became so lucrative in the 17th century, that it was a right only granted to tax-paying monopolies. By 1636 the star chamber issued a decree forbidding soap manufacture outside a one-mile limit of London and Bristol. Long into the next two centuries, soap pans were fitted with padlocks, the key to which was held by the taxman. Today, we are told the bar of soap is slipping from grace to be replaced by the liquid soap dispenser. These dribbling spouts, which spew soap in every direction save the intended one, are to personal hygiene what 4x4 are to good neighbourliness. They only add to the mountains of landfill, because inevitably they rarely last multiple refills. They complicate a simple task and need themselves to be regularly scrubbed. The tablet of soap perfumes all around it and when its job is done, disappears leaving not a rack behind.

• Retail industry
• Office for National Statistics
• Tax and spending
• Landfill

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You performed the worthy task of providing exposure to the labour conditions associated with the UK meat industry (Violence and abuse rife in food factories, 13 March). Indeed the EHRC investigation adds to the social science evidence base that has already argued that exploited people in this sector are "treated as animals". Yet your coverage fails to note the interwoven exploitation of animals and the pressing need to curtail the meat industry precisely because of its inequitable impact on exploited humans – not just in terms of labour conditions but also because of the relation between meat consumption with both impaired public health and anticipated contributions to climate change.

Dr Richard Twine

Lancaster

• Isn't it time we reconnected with how our food is provided (Perfect storm has led to a race to the bottom, 13 March)? The storm has been gathering for decades. At its core are corporate greed, long and unaccountable supply chains and perverse agricultural subsidies. It's not just workers who suffer – a race to the bottom means our food system is dependent on underpriced fossil fuels, does not recognise the limitations of water and land resources, and supports unhealthy diets. We will only be able to address these challenges successfully with a completely different approach to food and agriculture policies and practices. With the upcoming reform of the European common agricultural policy, we have a unique opportunity to do this. That is why today we are joining with hundreds of other organisations in launching a European Food Declaration (www.europeanfooddeclaration.org). The declaration outlines principles for a radically new common agriculture and food policy that is fair, inclusive, transparent, sustainable and, importantly, has the interests of people rather than corporations at its centre. This is the time to reconnect people and their food and do away with practices that abuse people, livestock and the environment.

Patrick Mulvany

UK Platform for Food Sovereignty

Kirtana Chandrasekaran

Friends of the Earth

• Ideally, legislation should ensure that these things do not happen in our society. Given that it is unlikely those laws will be made or enforced, should there a pragmatic solution, along the lines of Fairtrade or Freedom Foods, so that consumers can vote with their purses for decent conditions for the people employed in the food industry?

Vicky Brown

Truro, Cornwall

• The degrading working conditions that employees are subject to in many of Britain's food factories are a direct legacy of Margaret Thatcher's crusade against trade union organisation in pursuit of a deregulated labour market. The Liberal Democrat leader's support for this brave new world and his muscular redbaiting ("bankers are Scargills in pinstripes"), together with New Labour's ambivalence to working-class self-organisation give some clue to the feelings of abandonment driving sections of the white working class into the arms of the BNP. Women with heavy periods and people with bladder problems on production lines forced to endure the humiliation of bleeding and urinating on themselves need trade union organisation. They don't need Nick Clegg.

Mike French

Wolverhampton

• Sadly the abuse of meat plant workers does not stop at staff employed by the abattoirs. The job of independent meat inspectors is to make sure the UK's meat is safe. However, if they try to stop production to inspect a suspect carcass, they report being bullied and intimidated as a means of making contaminated meat pass by. They receive little or no support from the Food Standards Agency, their employer, when they raise this issue. Hundreds of redundancies, made to cut costs, mean there are now too few meat inspectors to do the job.

The FSA need to take action to support meat inspectors, and protect the UK consumer. It should not wait for a meat safety tragedy to hit the headlines before the concerns of meat inspectors are taken seriously.

Dave Prentis

General secretary, Unison

• Food
• The meat industry
• European Union
• Fair trade
• Nick Clegg

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Mandelson to announce £170m funding for nuclear manufacturer that could lead low-carbon industrial strategy

The government's much-vaunted "low-carbon industrial strategy" is set to receive a boost on Wednesday with the announcement of a long-awaited £170m funding package for the British nuclear manufacturer, Sheffield Forgemasters.

The company, which has been in funding negotiations for more than six months, has secured the last remaining £20m from bank loans, the Guardian has learnt.

It means Sheffield Forgemasters will be able to build a 15,000-tonne press to make large forgings used in modern reactors being built in the UK and overseas.

The business secretary, Lord Mandelson, and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, will travel to Sheffield, along with the business minister, Pat McFadden, to make the announcement on Wednesday.

Boosting the hi-tech industrial economy in the UK will become a key political battleground in the run-up to the general election after the credit crunch exposed the dangers of becoming over-reliant on financial services. Official data recently showed that in its first decade in power Labour had allowed the manufacturing sector to shrink at a quicker rate than under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

In response, Mandelson, who has been heavily involved in the complex negotiations, has been championing a new policy of "industrial activism". Ministers say that without more government support for industry, the tens of billions of pounds of new reactors and wind turbines planned to reduce carbon emissions would have to be imported. British manufacturers and workers would miss out.

To secure the funding, the government has pledged £65m in soft loans, with £35m from the European Investment Bank. The nuclear reactor firm Westinghouse is paying £50m upfront for its orders.

The deal also provides a much-needed boost to the north-east, where traditional manufacturers such as Corus have been hammered by the recession and which has one of the highest UK jobless rates. Mandelson wants to create a hub of low-carbon manufacturers in the region with ties to Sheffield University. He recently opened a new £25m research facility in Rotherham for Britain's civil nuclear industry where Sheffield Forgemasters can work with other UK firms in the supply chain.

Dougie Rooney, of the Unite union, said: "The only hope for the nation in terms of being able to pay off its debts is for the UK's engineering industry to become a global supply-chain player supplying components and equipment for new energy projects."

The Sheffield firm is one of only a few around the world that can make the special forgings for reactors. There is increasing political pressure on nuclear companies to source as many components as possible from the UK. The deal will create 150 jobs directly, but thousands more could be created in the wider nuclear supply chain as a result, according to Unite.

Sheffield Forgemasters, whose origins go back to the 1750s, became notorious in the 1990s after becoming embroiled in the "Supergun affair" over arms sales to Iraq.

• Manufacturing sector
• Energy industry
• Nuclear power
• Energy
• Energy
• Carbon emissions
• University of Sheffield
• Peter Mandelson
• Trade unions

Tim Webb
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Home Sweet Home is not just for humans. Swifts, the rapidly declining birds of the high summer skies, are overwhelmingly dependent on houses for nesting sites, a survey has found.

If a country that takes conservation so seriously can still be losing plants and animals every year, where does hope lie?

The names alone should cause anyone whose heart still beats to stop and look again. Blotched woodwax. Pashford pot beetle. Scarce black arches. Mallow skipper. Marsh dagger. Each is a locket in which hundreds of years of history and thousands of years of evolution have been packed. Here nature and culture intersect. All are species that have recently become extinct in England.

I cannot claim that I've been materially damaged by their loss, any more than the razing of the Prado would deprive me of food or shelter. But the global collapse of biodiversity hurts almost beyond endurance. The sense that the world is greying, its wealth of colour and surprise and wonder fading, is so painful that I can scarcely bear to write about it.

Human welfare, as measured by gross domestic product, is doubtless enhanced by the processes that drive extinction. Human welfare, as measured by the heart and the senses, is diminished. We have no use for most of the world's natural exuberance; it cannot be commodified or reproduced. Biodiversity does not belong to us: that is why it is worth preserving.

In Doha today, governments are engaged in their annual festival of frustration: the endless arguments over the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. They are struggling against what often looks like an inexorable assault by technology, economic growth and sheer bloody idiocy. The latter is exemplified by the battle over the Atlantic bluefin tuna. Many governments want to ban the trade in this species for several years, but Japan is resisting furiously. Whether or not a ban is imposed, the effect on Japanese industry will be roughly the same, as the species is likely to become commercially extinct next year if fishing continues. But the government would prefer one more year of raw exploitation rather than indefinite supplies in the future. There is no reasoning with this madness.

But it's the new report by Natural England that hit me hardest. English plant and animal species are still disappearing at the rate of two a year. All the goodwill, the billions of pounds and millions of hours poured into conservation work, the global treaties and concordats seem to be no match for the amplification of our presence on earth. If we can't even get this right in England, where the two biggest membership organisations are both conservation groups, where does hope lie?

There were several shocks in the report, but it was a different set of names that hammered into my mind. Some of the most endangered species have very ordinary – even, if I might be so rude, common – names. The common frog, common gull, common skate and common smoothhound are all in trouble. The common eel is now listed as critically endangered everywhere.

I remember, years ago, sitting beside a chalk stream whose entire bed was a writhing black conveyor belt of eels moving upriver. The eel was a universal, indestructible species. It can live almost anywhere, even stagnant water in which no other fish can survive; it can eat any old carrion, and travel overland between ponds on dewy nights. Nobody valued them because they were everywhere. Had someone told me, on the bank of that river, that within my lifetime they would be threatened with extinction, I would have laughed out loud. If the common eel is now critically endangered, is any species safe?

Beside the clanking rigours of commerce and technology, our concerns about biodiversity sometimes appear almost effete. That there are payoffs here is undeniable. The major cause of extinction in most countries is habitat loss. Most of this is caused either by clearing land for farming or by intensifying farming methods, in both cases to increase production. Even in the UK, where hundreds of millions have been spent on schemes to make farms hospitable to wildlife, Natural England blames changes in farm practices – cutting grasslands early, ploughing in winter stubble, the replacement of mixed farms with arable deserts – for many of the losses.

The rightwing thinktanks that demand a further intensification of farming argue, as they always do these days, that their real concern is not the welfare of the rich (the businesses and bosses who pay them to develop these arguments) but the welfare of the poor. If we were to farm with wildlife rather than only profit in mind, the decline in productivity would raise the price of food, at an intolerable cost to the poor.

There is some truth in this, as far as it goes. But I have never heard these people argue on the same grounds against unregulated urban sprawl, which every year takes millions of acres of good farmland permanently out of production. Far from it: they demand the scrapping of planning rules. Nor do I see them making the case for reducing the rich world's consumption of meat, to release grain for feeding humans. The immediate choice we have to make is not between biodiversity and feeding the world, but between biodiversity and blithering stupidity.

As a child I watched chalk downlands – where rare orchids and wild strawberries, adonis blues and marbled whites, whitethroats and hobbies, flint pits and burial mounds, had survived since the Neolithic – being wiped clean by ploughs, to produce grain that fed nothing but the subsidy mountains. Now I watch the remaining scraps of our collective memory erased to grow biofuels that produce more greenhouse gases than the petroleum they replace.

This week's issue of Fishing News tells us that around 2m tonnes of the fish sold in Europe are used for feeding other fish or terrestrial livestock, and a further million tonnes of edible fish are dumped back into the sea, dead, as they are over-quota catches. Much of this bycatch consists of species like the once common skate and once common smoothhound, which are now in danger of extinction. Japanese fishing policy might be stark raving mad; ours is scarcely saner.

So where does hope lie? I'm often struck by the strength of national feeling when an artwork – even one that scarcely anyone has seen – is stolen or damaged or bought by a foreign collector. Yet our animals and plants slip away unknown and unmourned. This country's wildlife groups are admirable in many ways, but they have somehow failed to ignite our interest in most of the species threatened with national extinction, many of which are small and unobtrusive.

It seems to me that one of the handicaps conservationists suffer is that few of these species have common names. It is hard to persuade people to care about something they can't pronounce. Nature is most valued when it intersects with culture. I would love to see a body like Natural England launch a public competition to name the country's nameless species: the micromoths and creeping mosses, the bashful beetles and unassuming mushrooms known only in Greek or Latin. It need simply list their characteristics, habits and locations and let the public do the rest. But it should set one condition: don't call any of them common.

• Biodiversity
• Farming
• Agriculture

George Monbiot
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Moscow ignoring ecological impact of several planned buildings for 2014 games, says UN Environment Programme

The UN's top environmental watchdog has criticised Russia for ignoring the effects of several construction projects for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi on the region's wildlife.

The UN Environment Programme says in a report to be released tomorrow that impact assessments by Moscow "did not take into account the cumulative ... effects of the various projects on the ecosystems of the Sochi region and its population".

The Black Sea resort of Sochi is under the spotlight as it takes the torch from Vancouver as the next Winter Olympic host. As constructors begin building facilities from scratch, environmental activists say the ecosystems have already suffered irreversible damage, and bird and bear habitats have been destroyed.

The Russian government says it has taken the concerns on board and accuses the activists of trying to sabotage the games as a public relations stunt.

The UNEP report was based on the body's trip to Sochi in January, which involved visits to sites considered sensitive along the construction path of a road and rail link that connects coastal facilities with ones in the mountains.

The WWF and Greenpeace Russia say the chief environmental threat is to the Mzymta river, which the communications link is set to follow. Thousands of beech trees have been felled to clear the path for the link.

UNEP also said Sochi organisers were procrastinating on political decisions that would mitigate and compensate for the unwanted environmental fallout of the games. "The mission observed that decisions taken at the political level ... are taking too long," the report said. It cited such projects as the enlargement of Sochi National Park, better protection of the Mzymta valley, and the creation of new protected areas along the Black Sea coast that would host migratory birds.

The WWF and Greenpeace recently suspended their co-operation as consultants for Olympstroi, the state-run constructor, in protest that their concerns were being ignored.

The UNEP report urged activists and the government to continue co-operating, saying there was a "reluctance to engage with or even listen to each other's calls for actions from both sides".

In its recommendations, UNEP said a "comprehensive assessment of the overall impact of the Olympic and tourism projects on the ecosystem" should be conducted.

It said the activists' concerns sparked the decision to visit Sochi and produce a report.

The Sochi games is adopting a unique "cluster" strategy. A coastal cluster of arenas will cater for ice skating sports, and a mountain cluster will accommodate ski, snowboard and other events.

• Russia
• Wildlife
• Endangered habitats
• United Nations

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Ethical consumers less likely to be kind and more likely to steal, study finds

When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to "green" type.

According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour", otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics".

Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write.

The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it – in other words, steal – they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.

Mazar and Zhong said their study showed that just as exposure to pictures of exclusive restaurants can improve table manners but may not lead to an overall improvement in behaviour, "green products do not necessarily make for better people". They added that one motivation for carrying out the study was that, despite the "stream of research focusing on identifying the 'green consumer'", there was a lack of understanding into "how green consumption fits into people's global sense of responsibility and morality and [how it] affects behaviours outside the consumption domain".

The pair said their findings surprised them, having thought that just as "exposure to the Apple logo increased creativity", according to a recent study, "given that green products are manifestations of high ethical standards and humanitarian considerations, mere exposure" to them would "activate norms of social responsibility and ethical conduct".

Dieter Frey, a social psychologist at the University of Munich, said the findings fitted patterns of human behaviour. "At the moment in which you have proven your credentials in a particular area, you tend to allow yourself to stray elsewhere," he said.

• Ethical and green living
• Psychology

Kate Connolly
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At last a piece of good news in the slow, uphill struggle for a better world - I mean, of course, our painful progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. On water, we are almost there! A report from the joint monitoring programme set up by the World Health Organisation and Unicef says "the world is on track to meet or even exceed the drinking-water target". Or even exceed. You don't see anything like that in reports on maternal mortality or HIV.

So celebrations are in order. The "Progress on Sanitation and Drinking-Water – 2010 Update Report," says that 87% of the world's population, which is around 5.9 billion people, have safe drinking water. But - oh why does there always have to be a but - alongside water goes sanitation. And sanitation, sadly, is a long way off target still.

Let's be clear here. We're talking about one of the last things people are willing to talk about. We're talking about shit. I sat next to a very interesting and dynamic doctor from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine last Wednesday night in the glitzy ballroom of London's Park Lane Hilton Hotel at the BMJ Group awards dinner, where the great and good of medicine were dressed up in black tie and glamorous gowns (not both at the same time) and we lamented the general willingness to talk about shit. It's her job, in a manner of speaking. Dr Val Curtis is a behavioural scientist and director of the London School's Hygiene Centre. She ought to know. Just one of the facts her unit promulgates - handwashing with soap could save perhaps a million lives a year. I hope to write more on what she is trying to do about it at a later date.

So back to the WHO/Unicef report which has dismal statistics on how far we have to go. Unhappily this is far more familiar MDG territory. Almost 39% of the world's population - more than a third of the people on the planet - do not have imporved sanitation facilities. "If the current trend continues unchanged, the international community will miss the 2015 sanitation MDG by almost one billion people," they say.

Open defecation, they say, is on the decline, from a quarter of people on the planet in 1990 to 17% in 2008. But this most risky of all sanitation practices is still widespread in southern Asia, says the report, where 44% of people still defecate in the open. Maybe it doesn't need spelling out for a sophisticated western audience who enjoy flush toilets behind closed doors, soap dispensers and taps that pour water if you so much as wave at them, but some of the worst diseases that kill small children are spread from hand to mouth - and that's unwashed hands that have been in contact with the shit that is lying around. I can't get the image of the sewage ditches running through Indian streets out of my head.

"Unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene claim the lives of an estimated 1.5 million children under the age of five each year," says the report. It may not be as big a conversational issue as Aids or malaria, but it sure matters, and this one is not just amenable to healthcare improvements. It needs poverty reduction and education - the basic stuff of development - just as much.

• Water
• International aid and development
• World Health Organisation

Sarah Boseley
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My brother, Stuart Tocher, who has died suddenly, aged 38, from cardiac sarcoidosis, was a gifted climber and all-round adventurous spirit. Having experimented with windsurfing, hang-gliding and snowboarding in his early 20s, he was introduced to rock climbing and it soon became his passion.

Born in Aldershot, Hampshire, he spent his working life as a highly skilled vehicle technician, working at various times on Honda, Citroën and Fiat cars (one year, he reached the British final of Fiat's top technician award). But he lived for his climbing and most weekends he would be off to places that offered fresh challenges: the Peak District, the Avon and Cheddar Gorges, Snowdonia, the Wye Valley, and especially to the sea cliffs near Swanage in Dorset (where he tackled climbs with names such as Hangover, Resurrection and Old Lag's Corner – and enjoyed cream teas in the local tearoom).

It was on trips abroad that he truly excelled and he climbed regularly in the French and Swiss alps, conquering, among other peaks, Piz Badile, Mont Blanc, the East Ridge of Aiguille du Chardonnet, the Dent du Géant, and the Contamine-Mazeaud Route on Mont Blanc du Tacul (an ice-climbing classic). Other trips saw him bouldering at Fontainebleau, climbing the Calanques (the sea cliffs of Marseille) and, only last December, trying new climbs in the Costa Blanca, Spain. One of his finest achievements was climbing in the beautiful Tuolumne Meadows, near the Yosemite Valley in California, where Cathedral Peak (including Eichorn's Pinnacle) was successfully tackled.

But Stuart was no solitary man of the mountains: he partied as hard as he climbed, was extremely gregarious and had the ability to make anyone laugh. He never married, but spent 14 years with his ex-partner, Lea, and was very proud of the role he played in helping to bring up her two children, Danny and Sabrina. He spent his last 18 months in Fareham, Hampshire, where he was happy socialising and passing on his climbing skills to younger friends.

On the Saturday before what would have been Stuart's 39th birthday, 31 of his friends and family members (and two dogs) hiked to the summit of Snowdon. Apparently the weather had been bad up there for months, but by the time we reached the summit, the sun had come out for us to toast Stu with a can of Guinness, his favourite drink, and eat a slice of birthday cake. He is survived by myself, our sister Janice and parents, Marion and Tom.

• Mountains
• Extreme sports
• Snowboarding
• Alps
• Snowdonia

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There are two reasons why I haven't had much sleep the past few nights. The first is about three-and-a-half feet tall, wears diapers, has long eyelashes and a dangerously cute smile. It's our little boy Sebastian. He's 18 months old and the poor guy is getting three of his molars at the same time. During the daylight hours, all is good. But when the sun goes down and the moon comes up, the howling begins, and his mom can only nurse for so long.

A few back-arching, full-throated roars would jolt anyone awake, but lately I've found it particularly difficult to get back to sleep. I'm starting a new job. The mind races. I left my post recently as executive director of Rainforest Action Network to become the next executive director of the Sierra Club. I'll be the 6th director of the Club in its 118-year history, and will follow the examples of people like Carl Pope, Mike McCloskey, David Brower, and club founder John Muir. Gotta be on my game!

Today's my first day. I'm inspired and honored to be a part of such a democratically-governed, volunteer-powered organization. From helping to protect Yosemite and millions of acres of wilderness to the more recent work of building powerful alliances with labor and impacted communities, Sierra Club volunteers and staff have played a pivotal role in many of the most important environmental victories over the past century.

But as effective as the organization has been over the past 118 years, we need to do our best work in the years ahead. The challenges -- and opportunities -- are too great. Looking forward, here are a few of the projects we want to complete:

Shut Down Big Coal -- the Sierra Club and a diverse, bottoms-up network of grassroots community groups has stopped the construction of more than 115 coal-fired power plants, and we'll continue to fight the remaining coal plants still on the drawing boards. It's a good start to a much more ambitious project. Over the next twenty years, Sierra Club staff, volunteers, and our allies across the country will work to retire the existing fleet of more than 500 dirty coal plants and replace them with the efficient use of clean, renewable energy resources. Coal is the top source of greenhouse gas emissions and mercury poisoning, and according to Physicians for Social Responsibility contributes to four of the five leading causes of death in the United States. Putting Big Coal in America's rear-view mirror will create more jobs, make Americans healthier, and is the single most effective thing we can do to fight global warming. Let's shut down Big Coal in this generation.

Rising Sun -- the Sierra Club Board of Directors has made a firm commitment to be a solutions-oriented organization. For example, this means we can't just work to shut down a dirty coal plant. We need solutions that are reliable and affordable to keep the lights on. We must be as elegant and effective in our advocacy for tangible and pragmatic solutions as we are in our opposition to bad ideas. The flip side of coal campaigning is our work to promote clean energy solutions. We envision all new buildings becoming energy self-sufficient and carbon-neutral by 2030. Increasing renewable energy to at least 25% of our country's energy supply in the next 10-15 years. Many people see fighting climate change as a moral obligation; something we have to do for future generations. We see the climate and energy crisis as not just an obligation, but an opportunity. Creating a clean energy economy isn't just something we have to do, it's something we get to do.

Reinventing wilderness protection -- Draw up a picture in your mind of your favorite National Park or wilderness area, and there's a decent chance that some Sierra Club volunteer or staff member had a hand in helping to keep loggers, miners, or developers at bay. But as the earth warms and plant and animal species are placed under greater threat, our society can no longer draw a line on a map and consider an area protected. To minimize the loss of biodiversity and wilderness, we'll need to protect habitat resilience using the best available science. This entails connecting large parks and wilderness areas through wildlife corridors; restoring wetlands and other buffer areas and building up the capacity of soils, forests, prairies and wetlands to soak up more carbon and, as we eventually reduce carbon in the atmosphere, accelerate climate recovery.

Inspired by Nature -- the Sierra Club invented adventure travel. Now we get to reinvent it. When John Muir took Teddy Roosevelt to Yosemite and the High Sierra, he helped inspire a President and generations of Americans to re-imagine their relationship to nature. Too many people today, particularly those living in urban America, don't have the resources, opportunities, or access to wilderness areas. John Muir believed that people who experience wilderness for themselves are much more likely to take personal to protect it. The Sierra Club will continue its Inner City Outings and Building Bridges to the Outdoors programs to increase wilderness access for all Americans. We must also inspire the adventure travel industry to make activism a core component of the experience, because the reverse of Muir's Law is also true: those who take action to protect wilderness are much more likely to want to have fun in it.

With chapters in every state and volunteers in every major city in the county, I could write all week about the work that the Sierra Club is doing. But I better go earn my keep. Come join us. And if you have any advice for me in my new job (or in keeping little babies asleep at night) let me know!

Read more: Wind Power, Coal Plants, Environmentalism, Wilderness, Clean Energy, Coal, Environment, Dirty Coal, Rainforest Action Network, Adventure-Tourism, Energy Efficiency, Volunteering, Activism, Climate Change, Sierra Club, Wilderness Protection, Solar Power, Green News

Ayrshire Power starts planning process for power station which would be UK's first to use carbon capture and storage

Climate activists are predicting a campaign of direct action against a new coal-fired power station that could be the UK's first to fit carbon-capture technology.

Campaigners say that if the proposed 1.6GW station in Ayrshire is approved, it will be the "new Kingsnorth", a reference to E.ON's controversial coal-fired plant in Kent that sparked battles between protesters and police before E.ON finally shelved it.

The warnings from Friends of the Earth (FoE) Scotland, WWF Scotland and the World Development Movement came as Ayrshire Power today took the first formal step towards applying for planning permission for the new station, at Hunterston on the Firth of Clyde.

The proposal has intensified the conflicts between green campaigners, power companies and the government over "decarbonising" energy supply and lessening the UK's heavy reliance on coal and gas for its electricity needs.

Juliet Swann, of FoE Scotland, said many local residents and a "large coalition" of environment groups would resist the scheme. It would increase the UK's use of coal, and, at first, use untested carbon capture and storage technology to tackle only a quarter of its CO2 emissions.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) involves trapping a percentage of the carbon dioxide emissions from power stations by collecting, transporting and then burying the CO2 so that it does not escape into the atmosphere and contribute to climate change.

Carbon capture should first be used on existing power stations, such as Longannet, which is one of two coal-fired stations in the running for a new carbon-capture demonstration project, Swann said.

"Carbon capture and storage is potentially a way to reach a low-carbon future," she said. "But it should be demonstrated on existing plants first, not least so we can share the technology with the rest of the world, and in doing so repay our debt to them for supplying us with so much of our dirty energy."

The dispute also focuses attention on the Scottish government's determination to abandon nuclear power, which generates at least 26% of Scotland's electricity, by increasing coal-fired production. The proposed station is near to Hunterston B nuclear station, which is due to close down in 2016; Scotland's other nuclear station, at Torness, will shut down in 2023.

Energy planning in Scotland is controlled by ministers in Edinburgh, while ministers in London control funding for carbon capture and energy taxation across the UK. The first minister, Alex Salmond, has championed carbon capture and the coal industry while at the same time insisting Scotland can become a "green powerhouse" from renewable energy.

To the fury of campaigners and local residents, Salmond's government aims to fast track the Hunterston proposal by using a new streamlined planning process, bypassing the often lengthy and expensive public-consultation rules that normally apply.

Residents are already challenging this move in court, claiming ministers illegally added Hunterston to the list of fast-track projects on the "national planning framework" without consulting them properly.

With the UK pledging to cut CO2 emissions by up to 42% by 2020, Ayrshire Power plans to make Hunterston the first newly built coal-fired plant in the UK to "capture" CO2 emissions and store them under the seabed.

New legislation requires power companies to fit carbon-capture technology for at least 300MW of its output. Ayrshire Power says 400MW (25% of its emissions) will be captured first, and, eventually, 90% of its CO2 emissions.

But Ayrshire Power admits it will need another £1bn – mostly from the UK government's carbon-capture funding programme – to pay for the CCS technology on top of the £2bn cost of building the power station.

The project has already suffered a serious blow after one of its original developers, the giant Danish power company Dong, withdrew from the proposal only days after E.ON suspended its plans for Kingsnorth.

Like E.ON, Dong also cited the recession and the heavy cost of investing in "clean coal". Ayrshire Power's sole owner, the Manchester-based airports and property firm Peel Holdings, admits it now needs significant new investors in the Hunterston project, feeding doubts that it will go ahead.

Ayrshire Power began the first stage in the fast-track process today under a new "gate check" procedure, where the government and statutory bodies check the company has the right documentation for the planning process. It has not confirmed when it will formally submit its full application.

Muir Miller, Hunterston's project director, said the plant would use up to 25% less coal than power stations now in use, by using biofuels and "supercritical" technology to burn coal at higher temperatures. The station would power 3 million homes.

"We believe our proposal supports the UK and Scottish governments' commitment to leading the way in developing CCS to assist in decarbonising the UK's electricity sector by 2030," he said. "We remain determined to deploy this technology at full scale on a modern supercritical power station, supported by appropriate regulatory and fiscal measures."

• Carbon capture and storage (CCS)
• Coal
• Energy
• Climate change
• Carbon emissions
• Kingsnorth
• Energy
• Energy industry
• Scotland
• Alex Salmond

Severin CarrellTim Webb
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The co-ordinator of the parliamentary delegation of the 4th Commission of the National Assembly, Job Capapinha, said on Saturday in Ondjiva district, southern Cunene province, the floods hitting the region over the last three years are hindering the socio-economic development.

I came across this little gem in the UK's Telegraph Sunday morning as my plane hurtled its way back across the country from New York - an hour late after the first officer slept his way through the Daylight Savings time change. (He claimed he didn't realize a near hurricane hit the tri-state area this past weekend, and thusly didn't leave enough time for traffic. Right.)

In an article by Matthew Moore, the watchdog group Advertising Standards Authority ruled that a series of public service advertisements funded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change "made exaggerated claims about the threat to Britain from global warming," saying that the content of said adverts went "beyond mainstream scientific consensus."

The kicker here is that the posters were takes on children's rhymes we all know and love. Here are the two offensive texts:

"Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought." It went on to say, "Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense."

All claims made by legions of scientists who predict extreme heat waves and flooding throughout Europe in the years to come, by the way.

And: "Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub, a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change... climate change is happening . Temperatures and sea levels are rising. Extreme weather events such as storms, floods, and heat waves will become more frequent and intense. If we carry on at this rate, life in 25 years could be very different."

Again, all projections made by leading climate change scientists, who have been measuring the steadily climbing sea levels surrounding the British Isles. These are not hysterical machinations of raving eco-nutballs, but scientific facts. But the ASA decided the texts in the adverts should be "couched with softer language." Ironically, they were OK with another advert depicting a father reading his daughter a "nightmarish bedtime story about a world blighted by climate change." Yes, that's definitely more in line with British decorum.

Excellent. In light of the British government's crackdown on exaggerated global warming claims, I did some "research" into some other subversive children's rhymes that might surprise you.

Here's one: Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Jack, don't shower with another man, it might turn you gay.

Then there was this one: Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find it. Perhaps it's hiding out with the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Another shocker: Ba Ba Black Sheep have you any wool? Why you calling that sheep Black?

Or: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again because he didn't have health care insurance, so the ER turned him away.

But the most eye-opening of all: This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef, which just contributed to this country's growing obesity problem.

Come on...

And please, feel free to submit any of your own subversive "findings."

Read more: Department of Energy and Climate Change, Global Warning, Climate Change, Subversive Children's Rhymes, Advertising Standards Authority Climate Change, Advertising Standards Authority, Green News

The multi-billion naira Kano International textile market, popularly known as Kantin Kwari, was yesterday gutted by fire. Three persons were said to have died and several others sustained various degrees of injury while attempting to salvage their belongings.

Solar Jooce, a social enterprise put together by David C. Agbakoba, has concluded plans to embark on a Solar for the Masses campaign, whose objective is to drive through rural communities in all the 36 states of the federation.

Deforestation and wanton felling of trees may have aggravated the recent drought in parts of Arumeru district and the entire Arusha region.

Last week a reader wondered if the financial and environmental benefits of switching off an escalator at Victoria Tube station were worth it. Might the benefits be outweighed by the possible effects of doing this, such as creating inconvenience for passengers and perhaps persuading them to take alternative forms of transport that add to congestion and pollution and generate more CO2? He used Transport for London's own recent figures to calculate that the economic value of the energy saved was less than £2 an hour.

TfL provided me with a response. It went like this:

London Underground carried out a study which looked at 65 stations with banks of three escalators, and that found that limiting use of the third escalator to peak times could halve power consumption and CO2 emissions, as well as save up to £500,000 a year across the Tube network. These measures were implemented at selected stations from early November 2009.

There followed some example figures, based on a "typical station" and a 15 metre escalator. If such an escalator operates for 20 hours each day (or 7,300 hours a year) its energy consumption and CO2 emission profile looks like this:

Wattage 29,000 W
Annual Power Consumption 211,700 kWh
Annual Energy cost (based on 7p/KWh): £14,819
Electricity Emission Factor 0.537 kg CO2/kWh
Annual CO2 Emissions 113,683 kg

This is a higher annaul cost than the very highest mentioned in the TfL document my reader quoted from: £14,819 per year compared with a maximum of £12,000, but that figure was from 2008. However, the main point in TfL's reply to me is that if their model 15 metre escalator is run for only nine hours a day instead of 20 - 3,285 hours a year instead of 7,300 - that profile changes as follows:

Wattage 29,000 W
Annual Power Consumption 95,265 kWh
Annual Energy cost (based on 7p/KWh): £6,668.55
Electricity Emission Factor 0.537 kg CO2/kWh
Annual CO2 Emissions 51157 kg
Annual Saving 62,526 kg CO2

TfL's conclusion?

The CO2 emissions savings are considerable, as well as the energy savings (116,435 kWh @ 7p per kWh = £8,150). LU network has 65 'third escalators' so the total estimated annual cost saving is around £520,000.

Taking the running time down from 20 hours to nine means switching the escalator off between five and eight in the morning, ten in the morning and noon, two and four in the afternoon and eight in the evening until midnight.

That's quite a lot of shutting down, and some would argue that it is too much at some of those times of day, especially from the point of view of the very young, the very old and the disabled - a point that has been raised by the Lib Dems' Caroline Pidgeon on behalf of a constituent. Also, the TfL figures don't directly address the main concern of my reader, who wondered if the energy saving benefits of the policy were greater than the drawbacks that might result from it.

These might be hard to calculate with precision, but thinking about it does exercise the mind wonderfully. A final thought: among several interesting comments inspired by the initial post on this subject was one from Dave Cole, who wondered what the saving might be from switching off some of the electronic adverts that line some escalators these days. Good question. Would the power savings be greater than any loss of revenue resulting from advertisers demanding lower rates? We could be here all day...

• London
• London politics
• Transport policy

Dave Hill
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Kenya has submitted Lakes Nakuru, Bogoria and Elementaita for inclusion in the prestigious Unesco World Heritage List, meaning that the country is likely to benefit from global conservation funds.

The 'Razor' is an environmentally innovative new tower block in Elephant and Castle, south London, that will boast three wind turbines. Take a ride to the top with these exclusive pictures