Environment News – Which Country Is Best For Leave? You Need To Be With Nature – Even If It’s Just Sitting! And a Desperate Polar Bear Gets Lost
Some bite-sized pieces of news from the environment this week.
19 June, 2019
News snippets
Plan for the expansion of London’s Heathrow Airport have been revealed. Many people want the growth in business, while environmentalists and local residents are horrified. Richmond Park – a huge (1,000 hectares / 2,400 acre) national nature reserve – will face approximately 70 low-flying aircraft every HOUR. The noise levels will be nearly 8 times higher than the recommendations, and are likely to have adverse health effects. It is London’s largest open space, and a respite in a busy city. Doctors treat many patients by spending time there – it’s a huge stress reliever and relaxant.
New research shows that a two-hour “dose” of nature a week significantly boosts health and wellbeing. And that’s even if all you do is sit, and enjoy the peace!. We all know we feel better after spending time in woods or beaches or parks, but this the first study into how long is needed.
New research shows that Africa will experience many extreme outbreaks of intense rainfall over the coming years, which could trigger devastating floods, storms and disruption of farming. In addition, there will probably be more crippling droughts during the growing season and these could also damage crop and food production. Why? We are burning fossil fuels, which increase levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cause it to heat up. Climate change / global warming, in other words. Many of the African countries that will be worst hit have large population growth. Climate refugees will increase.
more below……
more snippets
Which rich countries offer the best maternity and paternity leave on full pay? The Nordic countries (unsurprisingly) offer very good maternity leave, and almost all fathers take some paternity leave also. Estonia offers an amazing 85 weeks maternity leave at full pay with job protection. Japan offers 30 weeks of paid leave for fathers (wow!), but very few actually use it. South Korea and the UK also offer paternity leave but few fathers take advantage. But the real outlier is the US, which is the only high-income country in the world that doesn’t offer even a single day of maternity leave, according to a new report.
Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered. Scientists said they were astounded by how quickly the ice blocks had melted – due to several unusually hot summers in a row. Permafrost holds lots of greenhouse gases, which are released when it melts, helping to worsen the climate crisis even more than scientists had feared.
A starving polar bear has strayed hundreds of kilometres from its natural Arctic habitat and wandered, exhausted, into a city in Siberia. The female bear, visibly weak and probably ill, lay despondently on the ground for hours – a team of specialists will decide her fate. The climate crisis has been damaging polar bears’ sea-ice habitats and forced them to scavenge more for food on land, bringing them into contact with people and inhabited areas.
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