Environment | The Guardian

Seven years after the EPA accidentally released 3m gallons of acid mine water, poisoning waterways that carry water to fields, farmers are still waiting for compensationOn 7 August 2015, crews from the Navajo Nation irrigation office in Shiprock rushed to close the main gates of two irrigation canals that carry water from the San Juan River toward the fields of hundreds of Navajo farmers.It was peak growing season in the arid north-western corner of New Mexico. About 12,000 acres of crops had been planted. And a disaster was threatening all of them. Continue reading...

Thames Water’s £250m desalination facility out of action amid supply capacity doubtsA £250m desalination plant launched 12 years ago to increase drinking supplies during long dry spells has been put on hold, as water companies in England and Wales face growing political pressure over their management of the supply crisis.The Thames Water plant at Beckton, east London, opened in 2010 with plans to supply up to 1 million people during emergencies, but that ambition has been scaled back amid doubts as to when the facility can begin operating. Continue reading...

Australia’s environment minister says billionaire Palmer’s Central Queensland Coal proposal would likely have ‘unacceptable impacts’ on reef

Legislation passes with amendments from independents and Greens, enshrining an emissions reduction target of 43% by 2030

In letter to Daniel Andrews, union groups argue bill is ‘disproportionate’ and could lead to further limiting of workplace action

The latest comments from the former PM, who once said he was ‘agnostic’ on climate change, remind us some remain unmoved by scienceThe former prime minister John Howard remains an elder statesman among conservatives so when he’s asked on primetime television if he doubts that climate change is happening, his response is revealing.That moment happened on the ABC on Tuesday evening during an interview with actor David Wenham, who asked: “You’re not refuting the fact that there’s climate change?” Continue reading...

Tanya Plibersek accuses the Coalition of preventing the delivery of water for South Australia through ‘brown tape’ bureaucracy

Fast-growing species of branching and plate-like corals push cover up but are also the preferred prey for crown-of-thorns starfish

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has condemned the record profits of energy companies during a global energy crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 'It is immoral for oil and gas companies to be making record profits from this energy crisis on the back of the poorest people and communities and at a massive cost to the climate,' he said during a press conference where he presented the third report by the Global Crisis Response Group. Guterres called on governments to tax these profits and use the funds to support vulnerable people through the energy crisis

António Guterres urges governments to introduce windfall levies and use money to support vulnerable peopleThe UN secretary general, António Guterres, has described the record profits of oil and gas companies as immoral and urged governments to introduce a windfall tax, using the money to help those in the most need.Speaking in New York on Wednesday, Guterres said the “grotesque greed” of the fossil fuel companies and their financial backers had led to the combined profits of the largest energy companies in the first quarter of this year hitting almost $100bn (£82bn). Continue reading...

Just two companies have banned use as firms in drier areas wait until last minute to avoid annoying customersWater companies are in a standoff with the government over hosepipe bans as they resist bringing in restrictions despite growing concerns about rivers running dry and the prospect of drought in England and Wales.The decision to restrict water usage is made by individual water companies, which are advised by the government and charities as part of the National Drought Group. Continue reading...

More than 5,600 displaced and 400,000 left without clean water after heavy rain causes two rivers to burst banksAt least 24 people have died and more than 5,600 people have been displaced by flash flooding in eastern Uganda.Two rivers burst their banks after heavy rainfall swept through the city of Mbale over the weekend, submerging homes, shops and roads, and uprooting water pipes. About 400,000 people have been left without clean water, and more than 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of crops have been destroyed. Continue reading...

Adam Bandt says Greens will back legislation but signals further fight on new fossil fuel projects, while the Liberal MP says she’ll cross the floor

Results of 10-year project reveal that rewilding areas can boost biodiversity and crop yieldsPutting farmland aside for nature does not have a negative effect on food security, a study has found.A 10-year project by the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology revealed that nature-friendly farming methods boost biodiversity without reducing average yields. Continue reading...

As the climate crisis escalates, oil companies are posting record profits. We must accelerate a fair energy transitionThis week, major oil and gas companies reported 11-figure profits in the second quarter. At the same time, inflation has reached 40-year highs around the world and recessions loom. The obscene profits of the fossil fuel industry are jarring when set against the many households currently struggling to afford basic heating, cooling and food needs.Today, high energy prices are one of the leading factors driving inflation, and those prices are getting embedded into every facet of daily life, most obviously at the gas pump but also in delivery costs that affect everything from produce to paper towels.Tzeporah Berman is the international program director at Stand.earth and the chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative Continue reading...

Supplier cites record demand amid extreme dry conditions as reason for ban starting from 12 AugustThree million people in the UK will be under a hosepipe ban this month after Kent and Sussex announced emergency drought measures.South East Water said it had “no choice” but to restrict the use of water in its area from 12 August, citing demand this summer breaking “all previous records” amid extreme dry conditions. Continue reading...

After Concordia University Wisconsin built a 2,700ft rock wall to protect its beach and bluff, neighbors saw their own beaches begin to wash awaySix years ago, David Spector bought an 80-year-old house perched on a 120ft bluff, with a panoramic view of Lake Michigan.But that priceless view may end up costing Spector more than he could have imagined. His house, located about 20 miles outside of Milwaukee, sits in a particularly bad spot for erosion, with wind and waves whittling away at the base of the bluff. Ten years ago, the house stood 50ft away from the bluff’s edge. Today it’s less than 10ft away. Continue reading...

Advertising Standards Authority makes decision over Golden Leaves and JC Atkinson & SonAdverts for two funeral providers have been banned after they misleadingly implied that their MDF coffins were more eco-friendly than other options.Golden Leaves and JC Atkinson & Son advertised “environmentally friendly”, “eco-friendly” or “green” funerals including wooden or MDF coffins, with Golden Leaves adding: “Choosing an environmentally friendly funeral not only assists your loved ones, but also makes a positive statement of intent to help preserve the world in which we live.” Continue reading...

At this time of year, numbers peak for this amazing insect, which can leap to 20 times its heightOne of the delights of a dry summer is the proliferation of grasshoppers – or perhaps we are just more likely to see them. There are 11 native UK species, and about another 20 that have been introduced. One of the most common native species is the meadow grasshopper, Chorthippus parallelus, which has the rare distinction that it cannot fly, relying on its amazing springing power to escape predators. Its back legs can fire it off at three metres a second and 20 times its height. This is the equivalent of a human jumping over a five-storey building.The name, meadow grasshopper, also describes its chosen home, but they appear in gardens and any suitable habitat. They are generally green with a stripe, but sometimes brown and even purple. Numbers peak at this time of year. The slightly smaller males can be seen rubbing their legs against their useless wings to create a “song” to attract the females, which are up to an inch long. It is a regular, if feeble, whirring sound. After mating, the eggs are laid in the soil in a pod ready to hatch the following spring. Continue reading...

Calls for ‘coordinated controls that everyone sticks to’ as feral animals attack livestock

Climate minister says the aim is to equip people ‘so that when climate events occur their lives can continue’New Zealand has released its first national plan to prepare for the floods, fires and rising seas it expects to be unleashed by the climate crisis in the coming years.Climate minister James Shaw, releasing the plan on Wednesday, said that while New Zealand would do its best to start reducing emissions, it was also preparing for a likely scenario of enormous climate disruption, and said it was “crucial” the country was prepared. Continue reading...

Country generates seven times more output than in 1900, review finds, but remains ‘highly exposed’ to threats of climate change

Albanese government is under pressure to clarify the status of up to $2bn in funding for the gas industry and other Coalition fossil fuel developments

The Labour leader should embrace nationalisation instead, says Paul DolanKeir Starmer’s pledge to use regulation rather than nationalisation to fix our public utilities could not be more ill-timed or depressing for families struggling with exorbitant energy price hikes (Starmer says he won’t be ‘ideological’ amid renationalisation row, 25 July).It comes a day after the House of Commons business, energy and industrial strategy committee produced a scathing report into Ofgem’s failure to prioritise regulation over competition, with shocking examples of the collapse of numerous energy suppliers in the last two years, notably Bulb Energy, that have required multimillion-pound bailouts by the taxpayer, leaving consumers scrambling to find alternative suppliers. Continue reading...

Fish populations in the Hampshire chalk stream would be harmed if EA gives drought permit, says Fish LegalSouthern Water is being challenged on Wednesday over its attempts to resort to a drought permit to take more water for its customers from a chalk stream as the dry conditions continue, even as the company leaks approximately 88m litres of water a day from its pipes.The water company is asking for permission to remove more water from the River Test because of drought conditions in the south of England. But Fish Legal has asked for a formal hearing to challenge the attempt to abstract more water. The campaigning legal group says the company has not done enough to reduce water usage by customers or come up with a way to protect fish populations in the river before resorting to a drought permit. Continue reading...

‘Hyperion’ in Redwood national park, 380ft high and up to 800 years old, now off limits after damage done by trampling visitorsTree enthusiasts who make the trek to the world’s tallest tree deep in a northern California forest will face a fine and possible jail time after park officials declared the remote area off-limits because of damage done by trampling visitors to the tree and surrounding forest, a park official said on Monday.The tree, a 380ft (115m) coast redwood, is in a remote area of Redwood national park and is not accessible by any trail. But that hasn’t stopped scores of visitors from hiking to the tree, said Leonel Arguello, the park’s manager for natural resources. Continue reading...

Rights groups accuse Brazilian government of not employing sufficient resources to examine caseLeading human rights organisations have criticised the Brazilian government for what they say is a failure to properly investigate the murders of the Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira and the British journalist Dom Phillips.The two men were shot dead in June but eight organisations said that from the moment they disappeared, to the discovery of their bodies, to the indictment of three men for their murders, Brazilian authorities have “not employed sufficient resources to fully comprehend all the elements in the case and the responsibility of all those involved”. Continue reading...

Striking new images show lake has lost nearly half of its surface area from the historical averageNew satellite images from the European Space Agency have illustrated the extent of dwindling water levels in the Great Salt Lake in Utah, a month after it reached its lowest water level ever recorded.Highlighting falling water levels and the decreasing size of the lake, the report compares satellite images from 1985 and 2022. At its peak in the 1980s, it covered about 8,550 sq km (3,300 sq miles); in recent measurements, it has lost nearly half of its surface area from the historical average. The new record, registered last month, was the second historical low reached in less than a year. Continue reading...

Weather also threatens output in Italy and grain across Europe as Ukraine war pushes prices higherFierce heatwaves and a lack of rain in Spain threaten to reduce olive oil production from the world’s top exporter, the country’s agriculture minister has warned.“If there is no temperature relief or rains in the coming weeks, this year’s olive harvest could be notably lower than previous ones,” Luis Planas told Bloomberg News. “The olives sector is concerned about oil production.” Continue reading...

While the centrist senator Joe Manchin has announced his support, it is unclear whether Sinema will also back the billThe most ambitious attempt yet to pass climate legislation in the US may have surprisingly won the crucial backing of a senator who owns a coal company. Now it faces a further, deeply ironic, obstacle – a lawmaker who was once a member of the Green party.Last week, Joe Manchin, the centrist West Virginia senator who has been lavished by donations from the fossil fuel industry and made millions of dollars from his ownership of a coal-trading firm, stunned Washington by announcing his support for $369bn in spending to boost renewable energy and slash planet-heating emissions. Continue reading...

No single crisis, no matter how existential, will be enough to shut this machine down naturally. We must break it or it will break usIt is useful to think of capitalism as a robotic savant, spectacularly gifted at doing one thing and cripplingly blind to everything else. Global capitalism is an incredible machine for extracting fossil fuels from our planet, refining them, shipping them to every corner of the Earth and making staggering amounts of money doing so. The humming of this machine, the fuel and the money that it spits out, has powered a century of unprecedented production and consumption by the Earth’s first-world nations. Unfortunately the machine is also poisoning us all. But one of its exquisitely evolved functions is to make it almost impossible to turn it off.Oil and gas profits in the most recent quarter were astounding. Exxon Mobil made $18bn in profits in the past three months. Shell and Chevron each made nearly $12bn. Those are all record numbers. More major companies will announce their figures this week, and they are all expected to be bountiful. The war in Ukraine, which has devastated a region of the world and displaced millions, has helped energy companies by driving oil and gas prices higher. In this, we see another key characteristic of the machine: the fortunes of nations may rise and fall, but the oil companies will always survive and thrive, floating above the chaos of the world like passengers on a private jet, shaking their heads performatively at all the problems below.Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York Continue reading...

The pioneering team was created last year amid pressure from activists, faith groups and experts to make Phoenix, Arizona, more livablePhoenix is America’s hottest city, and it’s getting hotter. The global climate crisis and decades of sprawling urban growth has turned this desert city into a hazardous heat island with dwindling water supplies and inadequate shade.An assortment of programs to cool down Phoenix and help people survive the heat have not been working: in Maricopa county, which includes Phoenix, record high temperatures contributed to at least 662 deaths between 2020 and 2021, while thousands more people needed emergency medical treatment. Continue reading...

Swift’s plane is ‘loaned out regularly’, a representative for the singer says, amid claims she is responsible for 8,000 tonnes of carbon emissions so far this yearA spokesperson for Taylor Swift has denied that the US pop star is responsible for “most or all” of the trips taken on her private jet after she was alleged to be the highest-use celebrity by sustainability marketing firm Yard, calling the claim “blatantly incorrect”.Yard’s survey found that Swift’s plane has taken 170 flights between 1 January and 29 July 2022, clocking up 15.9 days in the air with an average flight time of 80 minutes and 139.36 miles per flight. The total flight emissions for 2022 were calculated at 8,293.54 tonnes – 1,184.8 times more than the average person’s total annual emissions. Continue reading...

Across the UK, cricket and golf clubs are starting to do their bit for local biodiversity by ditching the pesticides and nurturing wildlifeA row of apple trees defends the mid-wicket boundary at Whalley Range cricket club in south Manchester, while aged lime trees sporting bird feeders and nest boxes look on from the far end of the ground. A lone herring gull prowls the outfield, while a noisy flock of starlings settles in the slips. In one corner of the ground a mound of grass cuttings is allowed to slowly rot, the perfect habitat for grass snakes, although club chairperson Mike Hill confesses he has been reluctant to check whether any have moved in.Last year, the club won the Cricketer magazine’s inaugural UK Greenest Ground award for its work encouraging biodiversity. Badgers, hedgehogs and foxes are all regular visitors and, with some help from the Woodland Trust, the ground has more than 200 trees, from a young horse chestnut to a mature Manchester poplar (also known as the downy black poplar), that shades the score box. Continue reading...

Findings will increase calls for voluntary buybacks, which could provide the water quickly but would require legislation

Outrage after clip showing the vlogger Tizi roasting and eating threatened species went viralA Chinese influencer is under police investigation after a clip of her roasting and eating a great white shark went viral.Footage of the vlogger, known by her online pseudonym Tizi, showed her feasting on the predatory fish, which police in the central city of Nanchong confirmed was a great white. Continue reading...

New classification would mean a total ban on international trade in the animal’s body parts, as climate crisis and poaching hit populationsHippos could be added to the list of the world’s most endangered animals because of dwindling populations caused by the climate crisis, poaching and the ivory trade.The semi-aquatic mammals are found in lakes and rivers across sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated population of 115,000-130,000. As well as the trade in ivory – found in its teeth – and animal parts, they are threatened by habitat loss and degradation, and the effects of global heating. Continue reading...

Opposition leader tells shadow cabinet voting against bill does not mean it opposes targets, while Greens yet to reach consensus

More heavy rains pummel mountain communities, as Kamala Harris announces $1bn to deal with disasters from climate crisisHeavy rain has pummeled Kentucky once again, raising fears of further devastating flooding that has already killed 35 people, with hundreds more still missing.Another round of rainstorms hit inundated mountain communities on Monday as more bodies emerged from the sodden landscape, and the state’s governor warned that high winds could bring falling trees and utility poles. Continue reading...

The east coast faces a potential gas shortfall in 2023 amounting to 10% of demand and there are calls for exporters to fill the gap

Liberal MP says he is open-minded on bill but doesn’t want it to become an ‘impost on the community’ amid high inflation

Exclusive: leaders expected to say at Cop27 they need access to their oil and gas reserves despite effect on global heatingLeaders of African countries are likely to use the next UN climate summit in November to push for massive new investment in fossil fuels in Africa, according to documents seen by the Guardian.New exploration for gas, and the exploitation of Africa’s vast reserves of oil, would make it close to impossible for the world to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Continue reading...

Mothballed facility in Lower Saxony gets emergency permission to run until AprilA coal-fired power plant that had been mothballed has become the first of its kind to be put back on to the network in Germany, as debate rages over how Europe’s largest economy will cope without Russian gas.The facility in Lower Saxony, which is owned by the Czech energy company EGH, has received emergency permission to run until April in an attempt to boost energy production. Continue reading...

Unchecked global heating will bring once unthinkable extreme heat, with 16 US cities to rival summer highs seen in Middle EastThe climate crisis risks pushing many Americans into entirely new climatic realities, with a new analysis finding there are 16 US cities at risk of having summer temperatures on a par with locations in the Middle East by the end of the century.Heatwaves have roiled huge swaths of the US this summer, placing nearly a third of the population under some sort of heat advisory and driving temperatures to as high as 115F (46C) in parts of the Great Plains. Hundreds of heat records have tumbled, from Boston, Massachusetts, which hit 100F (37C), to Portland, Oregon, which reached 102F (38.9C) on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Further heavy rainfall forecast after deadly lightning strikes and flooding last weekThe monsoon season in India and Pakistan is well under way, with further heavy rain events expected in parts of south-west India over the next week or so. The states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala in particular could experience rainfall totals above 200mm widely over the next couple of days.Towards the weekend, this risk could transfer further north and east across India, with 200mm potentially affecting central states. This follows a week when dozens were killed by lightning strikes in India, while hundreds died in severe flooding in neighbouring Pakistan. Continue reading...

Shoppers encouraged to trust own judgment as chain removes dates from packaged fruit and vegetablesWaitrose is removing best-before dates from nearly 500 fresh food products in an effort to reduce food waste.From September, the staff-owned supermarket chain will scrap the dates on packaged fruit and vegetables, including lettuce, cucumber and peppers, to encourage consumers to use their own judgment about when food has gone off. Continue reading...

RHS Hyde Hall has made a virtue of its position in the driest county in England by embracing adaptable plantsIt has not been artificially watered for 22 years, yet this garden, on an exposed slope in Essex, the driest county in the UK, is bursting with bloom.A dry bed at the Royal Horticultural Society Hyde Hall dominated by cool greys and pale greens, and full of Mediterranean, Australian and African shrubs and flowers, could this be the future British garden? Continue reading...

Peak industry and conservation groups urge parliament to pass the Albanese government’s 43% emissions reduction target

Firm adjusts systems with aim of using 500,000 fewer bottles a year, and more customers avoid plasticThe UK’s biggest doorstep milk delivery service, Milk & More, is aiming to use 500,000 fewer bottles a year by tweaking its systems so that each one can be reused 15% more, as glass prices soar.The milk float operator is working with its supplier to source more durable bottles and has adjusted its machinery to reduce contact between the bottles and the side of the filling lines to reduce damage. Continue reading...