Sugarcane biodiversity disappeared as big plantations dominated the sugar trade in Hawaii, but now native varieties are making a comeback
Noa Kekuewa Lincoln remembers when he first encountered native Hawaiian sugarcane in 2004. The fresh stalks, bursting with color, might have sprouted from Willy Wonka’s imagination, not the soil.
Lincoln, a kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) expert in Indigenous cropping systems and an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii, said: “I grew up seeing grayish-green cane fields. But these canes are fluorescent pink, bright apple-green striped. They looked like huge cartoon candy canes. They almost don’t look real!”
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/24/2024 - 12:00
04/24/2024 - 11:24
Campaigners fear growth duty will hamper water regulator’s ability to crack down on companies in poor financial state
The Conservatives have pushed through a duty on the water regulator to prioritise growth, which experts have said will incentivise water companies to value their bottom lines over reducing sewage pollution.
Campaigners fear this will weaken Ofwat’s ability to crack down on water companies as it may force the regulator to consider the company’s financial situation and the impact on growth if it is heavily fined for polluting.
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04/24/2024 - 09:00
The divestment movement has a long history among US student activists, including in the overlapping movements of today
Cameron Jones first learned about fossil fuel divestment as a 15-year-old climate organizer. When he enrolled at Columbia University in 2022, he joined the campus’s chapter of the youth-led climate justice group the Sunrise Movement and began pushing the school in New York to sever financial ties with coal, oil and gas companies.
“The time for institutions like Columbia to be in the pocket of fossil fuel corporations has passed,” Jones wrote in an October 2023 op-ed in the student newspaper directed toward the Columbia president, Minouche Shafik.
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04/24/2024 - 08:49
Newberry county sheriff’s office reassures people siren-like roar is male cicadas singing to attract mates after a decade dormant
Emerging cicadas are so loud in one South Carolina county that residents are calling the sheriff’s office asking why they can hear sirens or a loud roar.
The Newberry county sheriff’s office sent out a message on Facebook on Tuesday letting people know that the whining sound is just the male cicadas singing to attract mates after more than a decade dormant.
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04/24/2024 - 08:23
Gas and coal accounted for just 2.4% of power generation for an hour last week, data shows, amid ‘zero-carbon grid’ plans
The share of Great Britain’s electricity generated by burning fossil fuels plummeted to unprecedented lows this month, ahead of plans to begin running a “zero-carbon grid” for short periods from next year.
Electricity generated by burning gas and coal fell to a record low of just 2.4% for an hour at lunchtime on Monday 15 April, according to an analysis of data from National Grid’s electricity system operator (ESO).
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04/24/2024 - 08:16
British Medical Association says decision to take Dr Sarah Benn off medical register for five months ‘sends worrying message’
Doctors groups are calling for urgent consideration of the rules for medical professionals who take peaceful direct action on the climate crisis, which they say is the “greatest threat to global health”, after a GP was suspended from the register for non-violent protest.
Dr Sarah Benn, a GP from Birmingham, was taken off the medical register for five months on Tuesday by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), the disciplinary arm of the General Medical Council (GMC), over her climate protests. The tribunal said Benn’s fitness to practise as a doctor had been impaired by reason of misconduct.
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04/24/2024 - 05:00
High winds, rains, winter storms and tropical cyclones accounted for 80% of power interruptions over the last 20 years
Power outages in the US are rising, as climate-related extreme weather strain an already burdened energy grid.
Over the last decade, severe storm outages increased by 74% compared with the previous 10 years.
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04/24/2024 - 04:00
£2.2bn-worth of oil processed in China, India and Turkey – to whom Russia supplies crude – was imported in 2023, data shows
The UK has been accused of “helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine” by continuing to import record amounts of refined oil from countries processing Kremlin fossil fuels.
Government data analysed by the environmental news site Desmog shows that imports of refined oil from India, China and Turkey amounted to £2.2bn in 2023, the same record value as the previous year, up from £434.2m in 2021.
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04/24/2024 - 02:00
A dawn chorus of flutes, whistles and chirps once flowed through my Cambridge window, but there has been a shocking collapse in birdlife. What can be done?
Every year from February through to June, the early morning chorus of birdsong is one of the most evocative manifestations of spring. During late winter I open the bedroom window before going to sleep, to hear that incredible mix of flutes, whistles and chirps that begin before first light, when I wake. I listen for the layers of song that simultaneously come from close by and far away.
This year though, the dawn chorus that once was the soundtrack for spring in central Cambridge has collapsed. It was noticeably quieter in 2023, and this year strikingly so. Blackbirds are depleted and song thrushes no longer heard at all. The dunnocks – once one of the most common garden songsters – have disappeared, as have the chaffinches, whose early February song was among the first audible confirmations of lengthening days. The cheery chatter of house sparrows is absent and the once familiar sound of coal tits has fallen silent. Long-tailed tits are now rare, and so far this year I’ve heard no blackcaps. Great and blue tits, robins and goldfinches, are still present, but down in number.
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04/24/2024 - 00:00
We don’t have to reflexively use refined sugar to sweeten. Dates often do the trick – in a way that’s healthier for us and the planet
When I attended pastry school in Paris a couple of years ago, granulated sugar appeared in nearly every tart, cookie or mousse recipe we learned. Only a few desserts used honey or maple syrup in its place.
That’s no surprise. Granulated sugar is dessert’s chief sweetener and also its secret pinch-hitter. It’s worth being specific: granulated sugar is nearly pure sucrose, and its unique powers have made it the standard for sweetening. It makes baked goods moist. It makes cakes and cookies tender. It combines with butter to make frostings fluffy and whips up with egg whites like nobody’s business (hence the cloud-like loft of meringue).
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