Emma Howard

Tour operator Intrepid drops carbon offsets and emissions targets Firm will instead invest A$2m a year in ‘climate impact fund’ supporting renewables and switching to EVs

“We need to be honest with ourselves that travel is not sustainable in its current format and anything suggesting otherwise is greenwashing.”

Refreshing honesty from a global travel company

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

London Ulez reduced nitrogen dioxide to legal limit, mayor says The mayor of London says the fall in airborne toxins is due to the Ultra low emission zone expansion.

This is a rare and amazing environmental success story & we really should be shouting more about it.

In 2019, KCL estimated that without action, it would take 193 years for London to meet the legal limit.

Birmingham, Manchester & Liverpool all recorded worse results.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Oh thanks, il enjoy this! If you haven't heard Peter G's latest album double album i/o, it's wonderful

Inside the Tony Blair Institute Who really benefits from the former PM’s tech evangelism?

Great (read scary) investigation into the Tony Blair Institute, its relationship with a US tech billionaire & efforts to get NHS health data opened up for AI

I also had no idea TBI was so big: 900 staff!

HT @petergeoghegan.bsky.social @maybulman.bsky.social

www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

Trump golf course in Scotland accused of breaching sewage limits Exclusive: Firm that runs Aberdeenshire resort says it is ‘categorically wrong’ to suggest it has caused environmental damage

My latest story was also published in the Guardian

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Trump golf course in Scotland repeatedly broke sewage contamination limits Sewage discharge testing found ‘non-compliant’ samples 14 times since 2019

As Trump visits the king & protestors march through London, we obtained data showing that the president's Scottish golf course repeatedly breached sewage contamination limits

My latest for @unearthednews.bsky.social

unearthed.greenpeace.org/2025/09/17/t...

Environment minister Mary Creagh has announced the government will make it harder for farmers to apply for emergency authorisations of a group of bee-killing pesticides known as neonics

Says guidance today will require applications to take full account of the risks pesticides pose to pollinators

Lush setting for a conference I must say - by the capital's only chalk stream, the River Wandle

At UK River Summit - lots of talk about the government's review of the water sector, in coming weeks and about the unfolding drought.

Hmu if you're hear & want to chat!

#UKRiverSummit

@mcivillini.bsky.social Hi Matteo, I don't think we've connected before but I work for Unearthed. Got a quick q for you about one of your stories - would you mind following so I can DM you? Thank you

Thirsty data centres are sucking up Britain’s scarce water supplies The tech industry faces scrutiny as secrecy clouds the true cost of cooling servers and the country braces for shortages and hosepipe bans

Britain's datacentres are already consuming close to 10 billion litres of water per year - and that's before any AI boom

by @adamvaughan.bsky.social
@foxglovelegal.bsky.social

www.thetimes.com/uk/environme...

England water demand-supply gap widens to five billion litres by 2055 The gap between public water supply and demand is expected to reach five billion litres by 2055 if urgent action isn’t taken, according to the Environment Agency (EA).

The gap between how much water England has and how much it will need in future just got bigger again

By @shoshaadie.bsky.social

www.endsreport.com/article/1922...

UK brands found in ‘fast fashion graveyard’ in African conservation area Clothes discarded by UK consumers and shipped to Ghana have been found in a huge textile dumpsite in a protected African conservation area.

NEW: Fashion waste is overwhelming Ghana — and now it’s spilling into Accra’s protected wetlands.
With @greenpeaceafrica.org, we found UK brands and huge new dump sites in a conservation area home to endangered turtles.
👉 unearthed.greenpeace.org/2025/06/18/u...

Rough sleeping to be decriminalised after 200 years The Government has confirmed it will repeal the outdated Vagrancy Act 1824 by Spring next year, to ensure rough sleeping is no longer a criminal offence.

📢Good news: The 200-year-old Vagrancy Act is finally to be repealed, meaning rough sleeping will no longer be treated as a crime in England & Wales.
CIH have long called for an approach that tackles the root causes of homelessness—not punishes people for it. This is a welcome & long overdue change🧵⬇️

That's "3.4 million wet tonnes" of literally toxic sh*t with "nowhere to go" to be exact.

Folks at home in the Shire will also be interested to know that the Midlands is where the landfill space is, so if there's a sudden shortfall of land, it's likely coming your way....

And this "artist’s impression of how Google’s new London headquarters could look if it was overrun with foxes" by @londoncentric.media who first reported the news

www.londoncentric.media/p/why-lime-b...

Google battling ‘fox infestation’ on roof of £1bn London office Foxes have ‘begun to dig burrows’ in soil of rooftop garden at the as yet unopened King’s Cross headquarters

Really enjoying nature getting one over on Big Tech here...

One source familiar with the construction told the Guardian "it had been a rolling three-year saga & said some foxes had begun to dig burrows in the perfectly manicured grounds."

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

This happened for decades with asbestos: industry lobbied to deem certain types safer than others, delaying a ban that would have saved countless lives

Warning over 'dirty secret' of toxic chemicals on farmers fields Campaigners say that farmers' fields are being contaminated by chemicals and microplastics in sewage sludge.

By our very own @ellieodonnell.bsky.social @zdboren.bsky.social

And covered by the BBC this morning

www.bbc.com/news/article...

‘No Plan B’: Water companies fear pollution crackdown will stop them spreading sewage sludge on farmland

This is a really important & quite shocking, investigation.

The water industry is worried that in just 3 years time it may have nowhere to send millions of tonnes of sludge.

Sludge is spread on farms but there are now concerning levels of PFAS in it.

unearthed.greenpeace.org/2025/06/09/s...

'How are we going to live?' Families dispossessed of their land to make way for Total’s Congo offsetting project Local farmers say they cannot afford to send children to school after the oil giant’s offsetting plantation barred them from their fields

Back in 2022, working with @source-material.org we exposed how families were dispossessed of their land to make way for the scheme.

unearthed.greenpeace.org/2022/12/12/t...

TotalEnergies abandonne en catimini un projet de compensation carbone au Congo Après l'avoir lancé en grande pompe, TotalEnergies abandonne en silence un projet de plantation de forêt pour compenser ses émissions en République du Congo. 12 % des arbres promis y ont été plantés, ...

Three years after our investigation into Total's huge carbon offsetting project in the Congo, the oil giant is abandoning it - @reporterre.net reports.

It's reportedly stopped funding the project & pulled staff out the country. It planted 12.5% of the intended trees.

reporterre.net/TotalEnergie...

NEW from me: China's CO2 emissions fell ~1.6% in the first quarter and have now been flat or down for more than a year. This is the first time on record that emissions are falling due to clean energy growth, not slow power demand.

Eighty percent of England’s peatlands are dry and degraded, mapping shows Healthy peatlands can help tackle the climate crisis but degraded peat emits carbon and contributes to global heating

"[It's] largely underground, changes in volume depending on whether it’s rained recently & tries to swallow you up every time you set foot in it"

The government wants you to know that mapping the biggest carbon store on UK land was not easy - & it's not healthy.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Tony Blair calls for radical reset of climate change policies in major intervention Former PM warns climate policy has become disconnected from ‘political, public, and economic reality’ and claims COP is struggling to ‘deliver change at the speed required’

The same Tony Blair has been paid to advise oil rich autocratic states including Azerbaijan, UAE and Kazakhstan

This should be included in *every* story about his net zero comments

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Brazilian Meat Giant JBS Gets SEC Approval for New York Listing Brazil’s JBS SA has received approval from the US Securities Exchange Commission for its proposed share listing in New York, clearing another hurdle in the meatpacker’s pursuit to boost its market val...

BREAKING: Brazil meat giant JBS has received approval from the SEC for its plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange.

The new comes days after we revealed its pledge to rid its vast Amazon beef supply chain of deforestation by January is likely to be broken

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

LEAKED: Oil Execs and Trump Allies Attend Jordan Peterson’s ARC Conference Executives from some of the world’s biggest oil and gas firms are listed as attendees at a conservative conference in London whose keynote speakers include the leader of the Heritage Foundation – the ...

project 2025 comes to london. kudos to desmog for snagging the guestlist

www.desmog.com/2025/02/16/l...

This is a nuclear-powered icebreaker, operated by a state-owned Russian company called Atomflot.

Atomflot has been sanctioned by the EU, UK and US since 2023.

🧵

Sanctioned nuclear icebreakers helped export gas from the Russian Arctic bought by Shell

NEW INVESTIGATION
🚢 Companies including Shell and Total import millions of tonnes of gas a year to Europe from the Russian Arctic on specialised LNG tankers. Last winter, these shipments relied on a fleet of sanctioned icebreakers to cross Siberian waters 🚢

New from UE:

The UK is exporting thousands of tonnes of a toxic weedkiller called diquat, even though its use has been banned here for years. More than half goes to Brazil.

We spoke to the Brazilian farmers poisoned with this dangerous export.

unearthed.greenpeace.org/2024/12/08/b...