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A rebuke to those who said clean power by 2030 was unachievable: they were wrong, we were right | Ed Miliband
Expert analysis backs our policy and its benefits for the country. Defeatist critics should take note

* Ed Milband is secretary of state for energy security and net zero

Labour fought and won the last election on the argument that every family and business in the country was paying the price of the previous government’s failure to deliver clean homegrown energy for Britain.

Families and businesses know from the cost of living crisis that our dependence on fossil fuel markets controlled by dictators such as Putin left the UK vulnerable and exposed to energy price spikes, as well as the escalating costs of climate breakdown. We also know that the drive to clean energy represents the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century. That is why the prime minister has put delivering clean power by 2030 at the heart of one of his five missions for government.

Ed Milband is secretary of state for energy security and net zero
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Ed Miliband

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/05/clean-power-2030-labour-neso-report-ed-miliband

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Country diary: Reflecting on a moonlit night | Mark Cocker
Burnlaw, Northumberland: Sleepless at 4am and studying our sole satellite, I’m struck by the remarkable journey light takes to make it into our view

I have a habit, if I wake some nights, to get up and go downstairs to read. Last night was noteworthy because I could see the moon as a mere horn repeatedly swallowed then reborn from the passing clouds. Through binoculars, however, I could make out the other portion of the whole lunar sphere as a sort of ill-lit inference.

It was Leonardo da Vinci who first suggested that this shadow part of the crescent moon is visible because of sunlight rebounding off the Earth and then re-transmitted on our one satellite. It was wonderful to imagine that the energy received here, even as I stood gazing, was re-presented out there a little over a second later. That is because light travels at a speed per second roughly similar to our distance from the moon (the respective figures are about 300,000 km/sec and an average 384,400 km).
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/05/country-diary-reflecting-on-a-moonlit-night

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Sea angels and devils: could plankton unlock the secrets of human biology?
Scientists use new technology to sequence the DNA of microscopic ocean creatures for the first time

Off the west coast of Greenland, a 17-metre (56ft) aluminium sailing boat creeps through a narrow, rocky fjord in the Arctic twilight. The research team onboard, still bleary-eyed from the rough nine-day passage across the Labrador Sea, lower nets to collect plankton. This is the first time anyone has sequenced the DNA of the tiny marine creatures that live here.

Watching the nets with palpable excitement is Prof Leonid Moroz, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida’s Whitney marine lab. “This is what the world looked like when life began,” he tells his friend, Peter Molnar, the expedition leader with whom he co-founded the Ocean Genome Atlas Project (Ogap).
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Brianna Randall

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/05/ocean-genome-atlas-project-scientists-plankton-dna-secrets-human-biology-sailing-boats

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We are all leeches now, trying to work out what is walking towards us | Helen Sullivan
One sucker is precariously attached to some flimsy reality – a wet leaf, a slippery rock – the other one pointed at the future

Imagine if your Wikipedia page described you as a “segmented or parasitic worm” with “two head segments” and “suckers at both ends”. You might turn to the Bible, instead – here is the Book of Proverbs on leeches: “The horseleech hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough: The grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire that saith not, It is enough.”

The daughters are the leech’s words (though some interpret the daughters as the suckers): “Give, give.” Within this damp, humid, leech-infested jungle is the surprisingly sweet idea of the words you say as daughters you have given birth to.
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Helen Sullivan

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2024/nov/05/we-are-all-leeches-now-trying-to-work-out-what-is-walking-towards-us

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Trump donor fined for pollution leads a fight to end methane emission penalties
Detailed plans from 30 oil and gas producers come amid historic levels of potent planet-heating emissions

A powerful US oil and gas industry lobby group has drawn up detailed plans to kill off penalties for emitting methane, a potent planet-heating gas that’s increasing at the fastest rate in decades, with this effort led by a major donor to Donald Trump whose company has just been fined for methane pollution.

Leaked internal documents from the American Exploration & Production Council (AXPC), a group of 30 oil and gas producers, outline a push to repeal a fee levied on methane emissions should the former US president win this week’s election and Republicans gain control of Congress.
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Oliver Milman

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/04/oil-industry-methane-emission-penalties-trump-election

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Country diary: I’m too late for the sweet chestnuts this year | John Gilbey
Rhydyfelin, Ceredigion: On another warm autumn day before the grey blur of winter, I find that the September gales denied me my seasonal nutty snack

A mature sweet chestnut tree stands by the path at the field edge. As I pass, boat-shaped leaves ease downwards through the still air, landing on me with a surprising impact. In this sheltered, west‑facing spot the tree has prospered, but this year I have arrived too late to enjoy the plump astringent nuts that fall in groups from spiked cases. Unlike its toxic cousin the horse chestnut, the nuts make excellent eating – but only a few specimens remain here, the gales of September having brought many of the seed cases to the ground before their time.

This tree evokes memories of almost forgotten autumns, of days with my father when as a child I explored the depths of the New Forest on Sunday forays. Then later, in my 20s, finding with friends hidden stands of sweet chestnut in the Teign valley of Devon, emerging with pockets bursting with nuts to roast – hissing – on the fire, after carefully piercing them to avoid explosions.
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John Gilbey

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/04/country-diary-im-too-late-for-the-sweet-chestnuts-this-year

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