Environment | The Guardian

Exclusive: Fat, oil and grease built up in sewerage pipes before being dislodged by heavy rain and ejected from Malabar outfall

Committee urges ministers to set out measures to reduce carbon emissions before work starts on new runwaysAirport expansion plans backed by the government are putting the UK's net zero target in serious jeopardy", MPs have warned.Without new safeguards, proposals to enlarge airports including Heathrow and Gatwick could push the UK over its carbon budgets, according to a report from the cross-party Commons environmental audit committee. Continue reading...

National Petroleum Reserve lease sales and permitting for road through Izembek wildlife refuge were also approvedThe Trump administration has approved more oil and gas drilling across Alaska's Arctic national wildlife refuge (ANWR), prompting widespread criticism from environmental conservation organizations.On Thursday, the interior secretary announced the opening of 1.56m acres across ANWR's coastal plains, which is home to various wildlife including polar bears, caribou and moose, as well as whales and seals. Continue reading...

Local non-profits and schools are helping students explore traditional practices paired with modern science to make food sovereignty a realityThe Blackfeet Nation is a remote and rugged landscape on the windswept plains of northern Montana. While rich in resources, the remote location and management by the federal government have made food access a challenge here.Only four grocery stores serve the entire reservation. Fresh, healthy produce and meat options are often limited at these stores, and prices are higher than in neighboring communities, making access difficult for low-income families. Instead, highly processed foods, rich in sugars, carbohydrates and fat make up the bulk of the food choices. Continue reading...

Severe blob' or marine heatwave can lead to increased inundation and wintery weather in eastern North AmericaA marine heatwave known as a blob was especially severe this year in the north-western and central Pacific Ocean, which could lead in the coming months to increased flooding in the US Pacific north-west and especially wintery weather in eastern North America, according to climate scientists.The temperature in August in the northern Pacific was 2.5C above preindustrial levels, according to Berkeley Earth, a non-profit that studies global warming. Continue reading...

French multinational is ordered to remove its website messages about aiming for carbon neutrality

Albanese government will need to make major concessions to pass promised federal nature laws as Liberals attack nature positive 2.0'

Former European officers say spending on low-carbon power would make nations more resilient to threats from potential aggressorsInvestment in renewable energy should be counted under defence expenditure, says a group of retired senior military personnel, because the climate crisis represents a threat to national security.They have called for increased spending on low-carbon power as a way of making the UK and other European countries more resilient to threats from Russia and other potential aggressors. Continue reading...

Environment Agency rates eight of nine companies as poor and needing improvement

The migration of Christmas Island's red crabs is in full swing, with roads closed in some places to protect millions of the crustaceans. Every year, the crabs emerge from the forest to travel to the ocean to breed, creating a red tide across the island. The Christmas Island national park said a massive spawning event will take place around 15 and 16 November, with a second spawning in mid-December Continue reading...

From a red-throated loon landing on water, to good and bad hair days and an airborne squirrel, here is a selection of the finalists in this year's Nikon Comedy Wildlife awards. A winner will be announced on 9 December Continue reading...

In 2024, nearly a million hectares of Ukraine's land burned. Heat, mines and shelling contributed, but footage of drones targeting firefighters has raised the question of war crimesNatalia Pryprosta was tending to her pigs when fire swept into the village of Studenok, near the city of Izium in eastern Ukraine. There was no time. She grabbed her papers, pulled her elderly mother into a friend's car, and tried to get the animals out of the shed. Smoke and the speed of the blaze made it impossible. She didn't see the animals burning, but learned of their fate later.Smoke smothered Studenok, turning the village as dark as night. Pryprosta's neighbours fought the flames with shovels, digging in scorched earth to stop the crown fire's advance. Firefighters arrived, but the blaze was relentless. At one point, it surged around a fire truck, trapping the crew. Continue reading...

Sussan Ley's sharp criticism marks a shift for the opposition, which had appeared open to a deal on the bill

Use of wood-burning stoves and fires in homes is mostly unnecessary and their toxic pollution costs the NHS millionsThe burning of wood and coal in homes contributes to almost 2,500 deaths a year in the UK, analysis has found. Stopping unnecessary burning would save the NHS more than 54m a year, the experts concluded.Wood-burning stoves and open fires are one the biggest sources of small pollution particles, which cause heart and lung disease, and their use has risen in recent years. The report also links this toxic air pollution to 3,700 cases of diabetes and 1,500 cases of asthma a year, although the health impacts are likely to be underestimated. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Promise to remove almost all fossil fuels from UK's electricity supply by 2030 may be quietly abandoned over costMinisters are considering dropping one of their central green pledges in an effort to keep energy bills down, sources have told the Guardian.Government insiders say Keir Starmer is prepared to miss his own target of removing almost all fossil fuels from the UK's electricity supply by 2030 if doing so proves much more expensive than building gas power instead. Continue reading...

US and Qatar say new rules will hinder imports of LNG, posing existential threat' to European economiesThe US has demanded that the European Union roll back its climate and human rights rules in order to allow greater imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), as the Trump administration approved a controversial gas export hub along the Gulf of Mexico coast.A letter jointly sent by the US and Qatar, two of the three largest LNG exporters in the world, warned the EU that its new rules pose an existential threat" to European economies as they would hinder imports of gas from countries such as theirs. Continue reading...

Council had initially defended the fixed-penalty penalty issued to Burcu Yesilyurt near Richmond stationA woman from west London who was fined 150 for pouring the dregs of her morning coffee down a street drain has had the penalty revoked after a council review.Three enforcement officers stopped Burcu Yesilyurt near Richmond station on 10 October and handed her a fixed-penalty notice on her way to work. Continue reading...

Transport secretary says updated airports national policy statement (ANPS) will be published by next summer

LA wildfires and storms this year cost $101bn, new study by non-profit resurrecting work axed by Trump saysThe first half of 2025 was the costliest on record for major disasters in the US, driven by huge wildfires in Los Angeles and storms that battered much of the rest of the country, according to a climate non-profit that has resurrected work axed by Donald Trump's administration that tracked the biggest disasters.In the first six months of this year, 14 separate weather-related disasters that each caused at least $1bn in damage hit the US, the Climate Central group has calculated. In total, these events cost $101bn in damages - lost homes, businesses, highways and other infrastructure - a toll higher than any other first half of a year since records on this began in 1980. Continue reading...

Experts say the administration's Maha agenda betrays the public' and doesn't actually seek to regulate junk foodAs health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr has repeatedly blamed industrially manufactured food products for the country's chronic illness and obesity crises, and urged Americans to limit their consumption of foods with added sugar, salt, fat, dyes and preservatives.Amid a slew of controversial and unbacked public health claims, his stance on ultra-processed foods is one of his least polarizing. More than 65% of Americans say they are in favor of reforming processed foods to remove added sugars and added dyes, according to a January Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center poll. Continue reading...

Data analysis found higher than average migration growth to the US from areas in Guatemala, Bangladesh and Senegal hit by repeated climate disastersThis article was produced in partnership between Columbia Journalism Investigations and Documented.Mohamed* sat cross-legged on the carpet before Friday afternoon prayers at a mosque in the South Bronx in New York City and shared memories of his crops. Continue reading...

Green groups defend essential' levy, but Gu desserts and Belvoir drinks among those who say shoppers pick up billA packaging tax designed to end our throwaway society is under fire for inadvertently adding to food price inflation as it pushes up the cost of everything from sausages to soft drinks.It's about 3p on a pack of sausages," says Andrew Keeble, the co-founder of Heck, of the new extended producer responsibility (EPR) tax. Continue reading...

Interviews with experts and key players across four countries reveal why efforts to stop the multibillion-euro trafficking industry have failed - and how to save the endangered fishBy 10am on the midsummer Day of the Ox, the city of Narita smells of charcoal and sugar. The cobbled road is thronged with visitors lining up to buy grilled eel, a traditional delicacy believed to cool the body and keep spirits up in the humid weather.We'll be so sad if it becomes extinct and we can't eat eel any more," says a customer sitting on the tatami-mat floor in Kawatoyo, a popular restaurant specialising in grilled eel, which has been operating for more than 115 years.Kabayaki-style eel, grilled with tare sauce, served at Kawatoyo restaurant in Narita. Photograph: Toru Hanai Continue reading...

Private briefings confirm how Labor intends to deal with some contentious elements of rewritten Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act

Sydney's Observatory Hill peaks at 37C on Wednesday - below the 39C forecast - as the mercury in other parts of the city neared 40C

Annual survey finds about 21% of 249 swimming sites across NSW received ratings of poor' or very poor' for water quality

Get out of the Honda Gwyneth!

Campaigners say figures reveal a lack of enforcement with just 24 fines issued by councils for rule violationsNot one prosecution for illegal wood burning has been made in the past year, despite 15,195 complaints across England, data shows.Additionally, just 24 fines were issued by local authorities between September 2024 and August 2025, responses to freedom of information requests by the campaign group Mums for Lungs revealed.This article was amended on 22 October 2025. The original version stated that there had been just one prosecution in the last year; in fact there have been none. Continue reading...

Bleak report finds greenhouse gas emissions are still rising despite exponential' growth of renewablesCoal use hit a record high around the world last year despite efforts to switch to clean energy, imperilling the world's attempts to rein in global heating.The share of coal in electricity generation dropped as renewable energy surged ahead. But the general increase in power demand meant that more coal was used overall, according to the annual State of Climate Action report, published on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Human-wildlife conflict has now overtaken poaching as a cause of fatalities - and is deadly for people too. Some villages are finding new ways to live alongside them

Dan Zafra captured a timelapse of something he could only dream of - red sprites, also known as red lightning, flashing above the Milky Way - while photographing from the Clay Cliffs in New Zealand's South Island on 11 October. Red sprites are brief, large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above thunderstorms, reaching altitudes of up to 90km. They are almost impossible to see with the naked eye and last just a few milliseconds

The objectives of the Paris agreement are slipping further out of reach,' say researchers from LSENo major bank has yet committed to stop funding new oil and gas fields or coal capacity, research has found.Most banks that have recently updated their climate policies have weakened them, according to the research by the TPI Global Climate Transition Centre (TPI) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Continue reading...

Government consults on allowing regulator to use lower civil standard of proof and introducing automatic penaltiesWater companies in England could face more, and automatic, fines for sewage dumping under new Environment Agency powers.The government is consulting on allowing the regulator to use a lower, civil, standard of proof instead of the higher criminal standard, for minor to moderate environmental offences. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Looming overhaul of protections should also include definition of unacceptable impact' on environment, Murray Watt says

Construction due to begin in 2027 on what is expected to become UK's largest publicly owned windfarmEvery islander on Orkney is expected to benefit from a major windfarm being built by the local council after it won 62m in financing from the UK's national wealth fund.All the profits from the project to build up to 18 turbines across three islands on Orkney will be spent on local services, council officials said, in what is expected to become the UK's largest publicly owned windfarm. Continue reading...

New rule would prohibit states from banning dangerous chemicals, and could invalidate hundreds of protectionsA new rule proposed by the Trump administration would dramatically weaken safety reviews for some of the nation's most toxic chemicals that are already on the market, public health advocates and an EPA employee warn.Many of the chemicals that would receive less scrutiny are among the nation's most dangerous substances, including PFAS, formaldehyde, asbestos and dioxins. Each poses serious health risks in consumer goods, or for workers handling the substances, advocates say. Continue reading...

Most vulnerable families could be without critical energy assistance, experts warn, as electricity and gas bills surgeMillions of Americans face having to ration heating this winter as the US federal government shutdown and mass layoffs by the Trump administration cause unprecedented delays in getting energy assistance aid to low-income households, a group that helps people pay energy bills has warned.Congress approved about $4bn for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (Liheap), after Trump's proposal to cancel the life-saving heating and cooling scheme in this year's budget was ultimately unsuccessful. Continue reading...

Climate crisis contributing to spread of diseases as hunting industry takes a hit from growing number of dead deerWhen landowner and hunter James Barkhurst went scouting his property about a month ago to assess the local deer population ahead of the fall hunting season, he was left in shock.I've seen about 14 dead in less than a mile stretch. There's a lot of does, big bucks and even fawns. You smell the dead everywhere," he says. And I haven't really went deep into the woods." Continue reading...

Three specimens discovered in what was previously one of the few places in the world without the insectsMosquitoes have been found in Iceland for the first time as global heating makes the country more hospitable for insects.The country was until this month one of the few places in the world that did not have a mosquito population. The other is Antarctica. Continue reading...

Air breathed by people in the city categorised as severe' in quality after fireworks contribute to thick smogDelhi awoke to a thick haze on Tuesday, a day after millions of people celebrated the Hindu festival of Diwali with fireworks, marking the beginning of the pollution season that has become an annual blight on India's capital.Those in the most polluted city in the world once again found themselves breathing dangerously toxic air that fell into the severe" category on Tuesday morning. Continue reading...

Guano, a fertiliser derived from seabird excrement, enriched Peru in the 19th century and was shipped around the world in huge quantities. On Santa Island, north of Lima, workers still mine it in the toughest of conditionsPhotographs by Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images Continue reading...

While Nigel Farage promotes retro plans to reopen coalmines, will he really tell thousands of clean energy workers to leave their well-paid, local jobs?This government is bad at proclaiming what it's for. But to find out, follow the money. Its boldest investment is in green energy, designed to create prodigious returns in economic growth, employment, training, climate action and more. So far it has been hard to sell. Wafty talk of greenness passes most people by, and whose growth is it, anyway?" is a realistic question in a country of stagnant pay and public decay. But, this week, Ed Miliband put flesh on the green words, making jobs and projects concrete. A very big number of green jobs - 400,000 by 2030 - are set to be created in 31 priority occupations", from welders to production managers, plumbers and joiners, everywhere from Centrica's 35m state-of-the-art training academy in Lutterworth to Teesside's net-zero decarbonisation cluster.This is what a Labour industrial strategy should look like. Nigel Farage's retro campaign for this week's Caerphilly byelection promises to reopen Welsh coalmines. But well-paid, clean, green-energy jobs within their home districts are what Miliband's Doncaster North constituents want, the minister tells me, not sending young people down reopened mines. Government figures show wind, nuclear and electricity jobs pay more than most - the average advertised salary in the wind sector is 51,000 a year, against an average 37,000. Unions, once sceptical and fearful of losing jobs in unionised industries, now sign up with guarantees that any new plant getting grants must support greater trade union recognition" and a fair work charter.Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Homeowners urged to use more robust planting and permeable materials to help mitigate flood riskNearly half of the UK's garden space is paved over, a new study has found.The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has conducted the largest ever audit of the UK's gardens, and found that they are an untapped - and until now, mostly unmeasured - potential resource for nature. Continue reading...

Conservationists argue president's oil expansion plans clash with his image as a global leader on climate changeBrazil's Petrobras has been given permission to drill for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River, casting a shadow over the country's green ambitions as it prepares to host UN climate talks.Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president, has come under fire from conservationists who argue his oil expansion plans clash with his image as a global leader on climate change. Continue reading...

After speculation and conflicting pressures, prime minister will attend climate summit next monthKeir Starmer will travel to the Amazon rainforest for the UN climate summit next month, Downing Street has confirmed, after weeks of speculation that he would not.No 10 said on Monday the prime minister would fly to Belem, in Brazil, for what experts say will be the most significant Cop meeting since Paris in 2015. Continue reading...

A legal saga stemming from a water quality project saw Tom Van Lent briefly jailed in a case brought by allies of DeSantisAn environmental scientist briefly jailed in what he called a political prosecution" brought by allies of Florida's rightwing Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, now alleges new evidence shows his jail sentence stemmed from fraudulent allegations.Tom Van Lent's claim represents the latest twist in a three-year legal saga ignited by a disagreement over a proposed restoration project that aimed to address Florida's recurrent red tides and toxic algal blooms by helping restore the environment of the vast Everglades wetlands. Continue reading...

A burst of recent climate-themed cultural output suggests views of the topic as too depressing or dull may be changingDespite (or perhaps because of) its overwhelming awfulness, the climate crisis has been oddly underrepresented on stage and screen. Humanity's greatest challenge has often been deemed too much of a downer, too complex or too dull a topic to spawn shows and movies.A burst of recent climate-themed cultural output, however, suggests this may be changing. Weather Girl, a one-woman play about the unraveling of a TV meteorologist who can no longer bear to gloss over climate breakdown in California, has just closed in New York City to upbeat reviews. Continue reading...

Set up by three eco-anxious' farmers, WildEast has created UK-wide version of pledge to encourage people to restore natureA grassroots movement to wild a fifth of East Anglia is going national with the launch of Wild Kingdom's map of dreams" to collect pledges and connect communities, businesses and ordinary people seeking to revive nature.WildEast was formed five years ago when three eco-anxious" farmers decided to commit at least a fifth of their land to nature. Since then, thousands of people have pledged to rewild gardens, school grounds, communities and businesses. Continue reading...

Meeting called for end of sitting week inviting backbench MPs to argue for or against dumping the policy after Barnaby Joyce announced resignation

Environment Agency says pollutant in Norfolk river is an unknown substance' and is investigatingDead fish have been found on a river in Norfolk where a large stretch of white foam appeared, the Environment Agency has confirmed.Images shared by the agency on Saturday showed the foam covering an area of the River Thet. Continue reading...