Environment | The Guardian

Revenue from mining key metal used in EV batteries to triple by 2027-28 while thermal coal exports set to fall by more than 70%

Swedish prosecutor casts doubt over theories that independent group was responsible for pipeline blastsThe Swedish prosecutor investigating the Nord Stream sabotage attack has said the “clear main scenario” was that a state-sponsored group had been involved, seemingly casting doubt over theories that posited an independent group was responsible for the pipeline blasts.Mats Ljungqvist told Reuters on Thursday that though a non-state-backed plot was still theoretically possible, the type of explosive used in the bombings ruled out a “large portion of actors”. Continue reading...

Noaa report shows rapid increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxideRecord temperatures, devastating floods and superstorms are causing death and destruction across the planet but humans are failing to cut greenhouse gas emissions fueling the climate emergency, new US data shows.Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO), methane and nitrous oxide – the greenhouse gases emitted by human activity that are the most significant contributors to global heating – continued to increase rapidly during 2022, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). Continue reading...

Government’s UKEF criticised for ‘locking us all into more carbon emissions for decades to come’ with assistance for the sectorA UK government agency has financially supported the high-carbon aviation industry with billions of pounds since the Paris climate agreement was adopted, it can be revealed.The effective subsidy for new airports, aircraft and maintenance comes despite the agency believing the oil-dependent sector is unlikely to begin cutting emissions “materially” before the next decade. Continue reading...

Troy, New York, has yet to remove a single lead pipe five years after getting the money. What went wrong?In 2018, almost 30 cities across New York state received federal money to carry out a specific, urgent task: removing lead service lines that poison drinking water.The city of Troy – which sits across the Hudson River and just north of Albany – was among them, receiving $500,000. But five years later, city leaders have failed to spend a single dollar of that money, and have yet to remove a single lead pipe. Continue reading...

Tulare Lake was drained a century ago. Now locals fear flooding as agencies rush in sandbags and rebuild leveesKayode Kadara is worried about the rising waters near his home. Just a few months ago, this landscape in California’s Central Valley was a dry basin filled with pistachio and almond groves.Then a winter of historic rain and snow brought Tulare Lake – a huge freshwater body drained a century ago by agricultural canals – rushing back from the dead. Workers from state agencies have brought sandbags in by helicopter, rebuilt levees and constructed walls to hold the deluge back. Continue reading...

Environmental law professor Jody Freeman urged to cut ties with ConocoPhillips, which pays her more than $350,000 a yearThe Harvard environmental law professor at the centre of a conflict-of-interest row lobbied the regulator on behalf of the oil and gas company that pays her more than $350,000 a year, a new investigation can reveal.Emails seen by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) show that Jody Freeman facilitated a meeting between a director at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and ConocoPhillips, one of the world’s worst polluters that is pushing to weaken forthcoming climate regulations. The company’s Willow drilling project in Alaska was recently approved by the Biden administration, despite scientists warning it will be catastrophic for global heating. Continue reading...

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Cornishman Ned Bailey has caught and returned ‘notched’ lobsters for years as part of a broader effort to preserve stocks. But many fishers do notNed Bailey has spent the best part of four decades fishing off the south coast of Cornwall. Today, in his yellow oilskins and accompanied by his wind-tousled collie spaniel, the 58-year-old is doing the rounds in the Falmouth estuary, hauling up a string of rust-darkened lobster pots.He tosses out stray crabs, several starfish and a squirming conger eel. Every so often he pulls out a lobster: if the carapace is over 90mm (3.5in) long, he keeps it; if not, it’s thrown back into the sea, in line with regulations. Continue reading...

Once-extinct, bitterns make booming ‘foghorn’ noise to attract mates with 228 calling males counted in last breeding periodThe UK’s loudest bird has had a bumper breeding year after previously being driven to extinction in the country.Bitterns became locally extinct in the 1870s due to persecution and draining of their wetland habitat for agriculture. Now the RSPB has revealed that thanks to conservation work, the bird, which has a distinctive “booming” call, has had one of its most successful breeding seasons. Continue reading...

Campaigners aiming to clean up waterways lodge complaint after government rejects FoI requests for details why applications failedLocal communities fighting to clean up their rivers by creating protected bathing areas have been refused access to the reasons their applications were rejected by the government.The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) turned down a series of freedom of information (FoI) requests submitted by campaigners in Kent, Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Cornwall, Suffolk and Lancashire to obtain more information on why the applications were unsuccessful. The campaigners have lodged a complaint against the refusals. Continue reading...

Shadow minister submits bill to curb spills as Environment Agency reveals sewage was dumped for almost 1m hours last yearMinisters have treated coastal communities as if they are “open sewers”, Labour has said, after a damaging analysis of Environment Agency (EA) data revealed sewage was dumped for almost a million hours last year.In total, the data – which was analysed by the party – shows 141,777 sewage-dumping events occurred across 137 constituencies on the coasts of England and Wales in 2022. Continue reading...

Two people were seen boarding the train with the animal wrapped in a towel

Judge finds protesters guilty of obstructing highway after incident in South Kensington last OctoberSeven climate activists who glued themselves to the road outside the Natural History Museum in south-west London have been convicted of obstructing a highway.Ambulances, buses, delivery vans and a vehicle carrying a 90-year-old in need of medical assistance were caught up in the traffic in Cromwell Road, South Kensington, on 19 October last year. Continue reading...

Rudolph Erasmus praised for ‘great airmanship’ after discovery of deadly cobra in cockpit of private planeA South African pilot was forced to make an emergency landing after a 5ft deadly cobra slithered past his side and curled up under his seat.Rudolph Erasmus was flying four passengers in a private plane at 11,000ft when he said he felt a “cold sensation” on his hip. Thinking that his water bottle might have been leaking, Erasmus looked down instead at the sight of a highly venomous snake disappearing underneath him. Continue reading...

Operator investigated for possible trickery and causing involuntary injuries over pollution levels within networkProsecutors in Paris have opened a criminal investigation into allegations that pollution in the capital’s Métro system is putting travellers’ lives at risk.The operator of the Métro, the RATP, is being investigated for possible trickery and causing involuntary injuries after it was claimed it had deliberately underreported pollution levels and failed to inform passengers about the dangers. Continue reading...

Bob Irwin leads push to introduce new offences for those who disturb the reptiles across the state

Sediments from last ice age provide ‘warning from the past’ for Antarctica and sea level rise today, say scientistsIce sheets can collapse into the ocean in spurts of up to 600 metres (2,000 feet) a day, a study has found, far faster than recorded before.Scientists said the finding, based on sea floor sediment formations from the last ice age, was a “warning from the past” for today’s world in which the climate crisis is eroding ice sheets. Continue reading...

Parliamentary Budget Office has costed Greens’ proposal and MP says it is one-seventh the projected $17.1bn cost of stage-three tax cuts

Pup moved to remote location after discovery on Vlieland beach, far from usual Arctic habitatA rare hooded seal pup born last week in the Netherlands has been moved to a more remote location to protect it from human contact.The pup was born on Vlieland, one of the West Frisian islands in the Wadden Sea off the north coast of the Netherlands. Hooded seals usually give birth on pack ice, and are rare visitors to these southern latitudes. In the past 10 years, there have been just four records of the species on the islands. Pups are weaned after just four days – the shortest period of any mammal. Continue reading...

Authority given permission to challenge high court ruling in favour of landownerWild camping may once again be allowed on Dartmoor, after the national park was granted permission to appeal against a decision to ban it.Alexander Darwall, who bought 1,620 hectares (4,000 acres) of the national park in 2013, took the park authority to the high court last year, arguing that the right to wild camp without a landowner’s permission never existed. In January, a judge ruled in his favour, ending the decades-long assumption that wild camping was allowed. Continue reading...

Upper Burdekin project would have significant impacts on four species, including koalas and greater gliders, developer says in public report

Risk of unrest rises amid fourth dry year, poor grain harvest, weak economy and likely food subsidy cutsTunisia has introduced water rationing as the country suffers its fourth year of severe drought.The state water distribution company, Sonede, has already begun cutting mains water supplies every night between 9pm and 4am. The agriculture ministry has now banned the use of water for irrigation, watering green spaces and other public areas, and for washing cars. Continue reading...

Marine Conservation Society calls for better regulation of how north-east Atlantic mackerel is caught as stocks declineMackerel populations are declining because of overfishing and the fish no longer a sustainable food choice, the Marine Conservation Society has said in its new UK guide to sustainable seafood.North-east Atlantic mackerel has been considered an environmentally-friendly choice for consumers since before 2011, but the species has become increasingly scarce and now experts are calling for more regulation over how its caught. Continue reading...

Gerard Rennick met with scorn, derision and plenty of corrections over viral tweet and claim that scientists are ‘cancelling gravity’

Chris Barrie says global heating poses larger security threat than China, and Australians should be armed with this information

The Natural Resources Access Regulator is also prosecuting the alleged theft of water by another irrigator near Wentworth on the Murray

Climate Council report says carmakers funnelling their least efficient utes to Australia due to lack of fuel-efficiency standards

Environment Agency says system trialled during strikes will continue for now despite false alarms and late warningsThe flood warning system relied on by hundreds of thousands of households in England will be put on permanent autopilot, officials have said, despite warnings it is inaccurate.The Environment Agency has been trialling an automated flood warning system since December, when strike action by workers over years of below-inflation pay deals left gaps in incident rosters. Continue reading...

Exclusive: UAE’s fossil fuel boss will be the president of Cop28, making a mockery of the summit, say campaignersThe United Arab Emirates, which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit, has the third biggest net zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion in the world, the Guardian can reveal. Its plans are surpassed only by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.The CEO of the UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc, has been controversially appointed president of the UN’s Cop28 summit in December, which is seen as crucial with time running out to end the climate crisis. But Sultan Al Jaber is overseeing expansion to produce oil and gas equivalent to 7.5bn barrels of oil, according to new data, 90% of which would have to remain in the ground to meet the net zero scenario set out by the International Energy Agency. Continue reading...

From the Iberian lynx to the Chilean devil ray and mountain gorilla, these stunning images by some of the world’s best nature photographers appear in The New Big 5: A Global Photography Project for Endangered Wildlife, by photographer and Guardian contributor Graeme Green. The book was borne out of a project to create a big 5 of photography rather than hunting, shooting with a camera, not a gun

Bare circular patches may be linked to spinifex termites rather than just plants competing for water as scientists had concluded

Cross-currents of denialism, boosterism, broken governance systems and deep-seated racism will meet with rapidly accelerating sea level risePredictions about how much water is coming vary greatly. Some scientists say we should be planning on three feet of rise by 2050, six feet by 2070 and 10 feet by 2100. Someday, not too long from now, the stories of many current coastal and riverside cities across the US will include sudden plot twists as well as new beginnings, as edges that had seemed solid liquify and become indistinguishable from the seas around them.That brings us to Charleston, South Carolina. Its geography is that of a small New York City. The city also has a history of racial immorality, often ignored by its contemporary boosters. Continue reading...

Oslo wants to raise taxes on its aquaculture industry, which could provide a model for how to better manage the marine environmentNorway supplies more than half of the world’s farmed salmon – a whopping 1.5m tonnes last year. After fossil fuels, it is the country’s largest source of national income, and a hugely lucrative one: in 2022, operating profit margins for Norway’s salmon farmers were estimated at 45%.Last September, the Norwegian government set out a proposal to raise taxes on the industry. Aimed at sharing the profits of one the country’s key resources, the idea was widely described as a “salmon tax”, and set at 40% (on top of 22% corporation tax). Continue reading...

Researchers say there are interlinked benefits across mental and physical health from prescribed time in green spaces or near bodies of waterPrescriptions encouraging people to spend more time in nature are linked to reduced blood pressure and improvements in anxiety and depression symptoms, according to new analysis.Doctors sometimes use nature-based social prescription programs – sometimes described as “green prescriptions” or “blue prescriptions” – to advise patients to spend time in green spaces or near bodies of water. Continue reading...

Many blue flag beaches were covered in waste, and Brighton was among the worst-hit, Lib Dem report showsEngland’s most celebrated beaches faced 8,500 hours of sewage dumping last year, new figures show.Many beaches with blue flag status– an international mark of recognition that a beach is deemed safe and has good water quality – were found to have been covered in waste over the last 12 months. Continue reading...

Move to stop overgrazing harming bird habitats would ‘destroy ancient tradition’ and harm business, say MPs

Blood rushes through its veins and the whale’s enormous body shakes slightlyBlue whales are the largest animal ever to have lived – including the dinosaurs – which also makes them the largest animal ever to have slept. All that sleep! A whole whale’s worth, in vast, cold water, the ocean a closed eye, salty and dark. To watch a whale sleeping is to feel as though they have turned the world around them into sleep, that they are suspended in sleep itself, in the liquid that fills your bones when you turn off the light.Sperm whales sleep vertically, in groups, suspended impossibly, the way an object might be suspended only in a dream. They look like planets, their orbit suddenly stopped. They look as if they could stop time. And maybe they would, if they ever slept for longer than 20 minutes, or closed both eyes. Continue reading...

Residents of Sparta, Georgia, are trying to stop the Sandersville railroad and its influential owners from building a spur to a quarryA majority-Black rural community in Georgia is battling to stop a railroad company from seizing private land for a new train line they say will cause environmental and economic harms.Residents of Sparta, a poor community of 1,300 people located a hundred miles south-east of Atlanta, are opposing the construction of a rail spur that would connect a local quarry to the main train line, enabling the gravel company to vastly expand mining that already causes dust, debris and noise pollution. Continue reading...

Regulator announces two-year plan in victory for campaigners pushing to clean up England’s riversMore than £1.6bn is to be invested by water companies in England in the next two years, the regulator, Ofwat, has announced, in a victory for campaigners pushing to clean up rivers.The investment by water companies has been brought forward to speed up projects to tackle pollution and drought. Continue reading...

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Footage of unknown snailfish captured by researchers from Western Australia and Tokyo in Izu-Ogasawara trench

‘He now walks in another place, but he has left such great footsteps for us to follow’

UK’s 9.4m cattle produce 14% of human-related emissions, mostly from belching, but green groups remain scepticalCows in the UK could be given “methane blockers” to reduce their emissions of the greenhouse gas as part of plans to achieve the country’s climate goals.Farmers welcomed the proposal, which follows a consultation that began in August on how new types of animal feed product can reduce digestive emissions from the animals. Continue reading...

‘Fringe’ research suggests the insects that are essential to agriculture have emotions, dreams and even PTSD, raising complex ethical questionsWhen Stephen Buchmann finds a wayward bee on a window inside his Tucson, Arizona, home, he goes to great lengths to capture and release it unharmed. Using a container, he carefully traps the bee against the glass before walking to his garden and placing it on a flower to recuperate.Buchmann’s kindness – he is a pollination ecologist who has studied bees for over 40 years – is about more than just returning the insect to its desert ecosystem. It’s also because Buchmann believes that bees have complex feelings, and he’s gathered the science to prove it. Continue reading...

The closer the rodents live to the centre of the city, the worse their symptoms of lung diseaseDeteriorating air quality is a major threat to health, and scientists have discovered that humans are not the only ones in danger.Grey squirrels suffer worsening lung damage the closer they live to the centre of a city, according to a study in London. It found the lungs of the rodent residents of Richmond fare far better than those of central Westminster. Continue reading...

Labour leader accuses ministers of turning rivers into ‘open sewers’ after Thérèse Coffey says firms will face tougher penaltiesLabour has dismissed government plans that could see water companies in England facing tougher fines and penalties as part of efforts to tackle pollution.The environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, is expected to set out plans next week that ministers believe will “make polluters pay”, with fines levied on water companies put into a “water restoration fund”. Continue reading...

Colleagues and students query role of Jody Freeman, who won prestigious research grant despite sitting on ConocoPhillips boardAn eminent Harvard environmental law professor’s links to the fossil fuel industry are under scrutiny from colleagues and students after she was awarded a prestigious research grant to investigate corporate climate pledges.Jody Freeman, founding director of Harvard’s environmental and energy law program and former Obama-era White House advisor, is a paid board member of ConocoPhillips – a Fortune 500 American multinational oil and gas company that was ranked the 13th most polluting in the world by a Guardian investigation in 2019. The firm’s controversial Willow drilling project in Alaska was recently approved by the Biden administration. Continue reading...

Severe storms may have filled reservoirs but in the Golden State, a dry spell is ‘always lurking in the background’Just a few months ago, millions in California were living under mandatory water conservation rules. The driest three years on record had transformed the state, depleted reservoirs and desiccated landscapes.Then came a deluge. A dozen atmospheric river storms and several “bomb cyclones” have broken levees and buried mountain communities in snow, but they have also delivered a boon. Reservoirs are refilling. Brown hills are blooming once again. Continue reading...

Rangers work to avoid repeat of last year’s devastating losses in breeding seabird colonies on the islands off the Northumberland coastThe Farne Islands will not open to visitors this spring in anticipation of bird flu once again ravaging breeding seabird colonies, after an “unprecedented” spate of deaths last year.The rocky outcrop of islands off the coast of Northumberland has been looked after by the National Trust since 1925 and there are no previous records of so many endangered seabirds dying at once. More than 6,000 carcasses were picked up last year, which is believed to be the tip of the iceberg compared with how many birds would have died in total. Continue reading...