This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases
22:52 UK time, Monday, 17 October 2011
Is there a simpler way to put a price on carbon?
The biggest carbon trading project in the world - the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) - has brought small declines in emissions across the bloc, but has few fans.
16:40 UK time, Friday, 14 October 2011
If only ships could tell stories...
Whose would you like to listen to first? HMS Victory? Titanic? The Beagle? A chorus from the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria?
17:26 UK time, Thursday, 13 October 2011
The Royal Society, the UK's national science academy, has produced a blueprint for a safer nuclear age.
In a world where nuclear weapons, reactors, and spent fuel are all realities - much as some people would like to wish them away - the society is asking what needs to be done to safeguard those resources, and in doing so, to safeguard us.
17:47 UK time, Thursday, 6 October 2011
Earlier this week, the journal Proceeedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a study on climate change that is at the same time scary, comforting, insightful and a statement of the obvious.
To be more accurate, I should probably say that the paper is capable of being interpreted in all of those ways, rather than risk implying that the authors intended to do more than run the numbers and see what popped up.
12:47 UK time, Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Would they commit, or wouldn't they?
The Japanese government has delayed its decision on the future of its Antarctic whaling programme longer than a commitment-phobic fiance.
15:55 UK time, Monday, 3 October 2011
Some quotes stay with you forever.
One that's stayed with me came from Rafael Centenera, a general assistant director in Spanish fisheries ministry, when I interviewed him in Vigo, Europe's busiest fishing port, in 2007.
16:02 UK time, Wednesday, 28 September 2011
There's a welter of environmental anniversaries this year, notably the 50th birthday of WWF and the 40th of both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth International.
Much less trumpeted, but in its own way more significant, is one that dates back to the middle of the 19th Century, which is being marked this week by a special conference in Dublin.
11:23 UK time, Monday, 26 September 2011
Wangari Maathai's compelling life story is inextricably linked with the social and political changes that so much of Africa has been through since the idea of throwing off European colonialism began to gain traction shortly after World War II.
Her unique insight was that the lives of Kenyans - and, by extension, of people in many other developing countries - would be made better if economic and social progress went hand in hand with environmental protection.
10:11 UK time, Tuesday, 20 September 2011
The part of News Corporation that makes Times Atlases is currently taking the same kind of kicking from scientists that some of its newspapers took from the general public over phone-hacking.
What it's being kicked for is for claiming, in the edition that came out last week, that the Greenland ice sheet has shrunk by 15% over 12 years, necessitating the re-drawing of its boundaries.
17:27 UK time, Thursday, 15 September 2011
I'm not too keen on raising the same kind of point in successive articles, but the news that UK scientists are to trial an innovative piece of geo-engineering kit within a couple of months begs some of the same questions that came up in Monday's piece on carbon capture and storage (CCS).
The most basic one is simple - money.
00:14 UK time, Tuesday, 13 September 2011
How do you fancy living near a fissure in the Earth that keeps releasing carbon dioxide?
It's a question few of us might have considered in the past; but we may have to in future, if the vision of those in the carbon capture and storage (CCS) lobby comes to fruition.
13:33 UK time, Friday, 2 September 2011
In a book that's already annoyed a lot of greens with its enthusiasm for nuclear power and geo-engineering, Mark Lynas's The God Species also floats the question of which kind of agriculture is actually best for nature.
The book formed part of my holiday reading - but having accidentally dropped it in the bath, my copy has disintegrated, so I can't bring you any direct quotes from the chapter in question.
10:05 UK time, Tuesday, 30 August 2011
In these cash-strapped times, it's no surprise to see funding disappearing from science and environment projects - even those that have huge potential to alleviate hazards felt by many millions of people around the world.
The latest likely casualty is one of the most enticing of all earth science collaborations - the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP).
18:48 UK time, Wednesday, 24 August 2011
Does a changing climate mean an increase in conflict and civil unrest around the world?
Some of the world's military authorities believe it might - elements in the US armed forces hierarchy, for example, see climate change as a security issue for just that reason.
13:54 UK time, Friday, 29 July 2011
This will be the last post for a few weeks as holidays beckon.
So why not leave you with perhaps the biggest question in the environmental book - where is the natural world heading, if nothing much changes?
17:22 UK time, Thursday, 28 July 2011
It's the summer of 1497, and explorer John Cabot, freshly arrived from Europe, eagerly samples the waters off what are now eastern Canada.
"The sea there is swarming with fish, which can be taken not only with the net, but in baskets let down with a stone, so that it sinks in the water," wrote the Milanese ambassador to London to his Ducal boss, in an account of the voyage.
14:22 UK time, Monday, 25 July 2011
Although it usually happens by accident rather than design, the good cop/bad cop routine is perhaps one of the environment movement's most useful strategies.
A company's reputation is taking a battering from environmental group A, which is accusing it of doing illegal or rapacious things.
17:33 UK time, Friday, 22 July 2011
In the last couple of Northern Hemisphere winters, with temperatures plummeting across tracts of North America and western Europe, "belief" in man-made global warming - it was widely reported - took a bit of a dip.
As to why that might be, there was no hard evidence - but plenty of the anecdotal stuff around in comments on blog posts, and from callers to phone-in programmes, suggested the weather was indeed an issue.
19:10 UK time, Thursday, 21 July 2011
Tiny aerosol particles in the atmosphere are perhaps the second most important way - after greenhouse gas emissions - in which human activities are changing the Earth's climate.
But changing it how?
16:21 UK time, Wednesday, 20 July 2011
One of the oddest things about the UN climate process is the way it virtually forces countries with diametrically opposed interests to huddle close and pretend to be friends.
EU nations, most of which officially want to press ahead with tying up a binding new global agreement, tend through reasons of history and expediency to stay close by the US, which does not.
Richard produced and presented science and environment programmes for BBC World Service prior to becoming a news correspondent.
He regularly covers major environment conferences such as the UN climate summits in Copenhagen and Cancun and the UN biodiversity summit in Nagoya in 2010, and recently made radio documentary series on forests, whaling and fisheries.
He has led environment news coverage on the BBC News website for six years.
Richard relaxes with music, sport and reading.
Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent
UK and European space and the latest major science stories
Tom Feilden
Science correspondent, Today programme
Analysis of the scientific issues that are making headlines
Fergus Walsh
Medical correspondent
A focus on the medical and health issues of the day
BBC © 2011 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.
