Environment | The Guardian

Labor revokes Abbott government move which allowed energy from burning wood waste to be counted with solar and wind

Conservationists say amount is ‘nothing like what’s needed’ to achieve 30x30 target and address nature crisisThe UK has announced it will give nearly £30m to support developing countries in delivering the target to protect 30% of land and ocean by 2030, an amount conservationists criticised as being “nothing like what’s needed”.The announcement was made on Thursday as the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, started international negotiations at Cop15 in Montreal. The £29m pledge – £24m of which is new money – is being allocated to support developing countries in delivering the 30x30 target, which is a negotiating priority for the UK at the UN summit. Continue reading...

Brazil’s incoming president adds voice to demand as Montreal talks restart after series of walkoutsBrazil’s incoming president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has backed calls for rich nations to provide more money to protect Earth’s ecosystems at Cop15 as talks restarted in Montreal after a series of walkouts.More than 100 environment ministers have arrived at the biodiversity summit in Canada before a weekend of intense negotiations on this decade’s UN targets to protect the natural world. Continue reading...

US star, who was also in Succession, urged leaders at biodiversity conference to take more forceful action to end nature crisisThe US actor James Cromwell revisited his old role in Jurassic Park with a modern twist in a protest against inaction on the nature crisis. He urged leaders at Cop15 to “Stop the Human Asteroid” as he stood in front of a model dinosaur surrounded by pictures of world leaders’ heads as bits of rock flying into Earth.The 82-year-old actor – known for his roles as Ewan Logan in Succession and the farmer in Babe – staged the protest near the Cop15 convention centre in Montreal, where more than 10,000 people have gathered to create the next decade of targets to bend the curve on biodiversity loss. He told the Guardian: “With all the history of the Cops, we have achieved nothing, absolutely nothing, and they know that. I don’t know how they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning.” Continue reading...

Eladio Fernandez was rewarded after an arduous hike up a Haitian mountain, following in the footsteps of the Swedish botanist who last saw the fragrant flower in 1925“Imagine the privilege of smelling a wonderful perfume that no one else alive on Earth has smelled before,” says the conservation photographer Eladio Fernandez. This year, Fernandez had that pleasure. After a challenging search in the cloud forests of northern Haiti, he located several Magnolia emarginata, a critically endangered tree with white flowers that hadn’t been seen (or smelled) for almost a century.“Magnolia have two attractive characteristics: their beautiful white flowers and their unique fragrance,” he says. Continue reading...

Regenerative gardening predicted to take off next year as people future-proof spaces for extreme climateSeaweed compost supplements and “manure” made of beans will be among the top garden trends of 2023, the Royal Horticultural Society has predicted.As regenerative gardening becomes fashionable, experts in the horticulture charity’s gardens have been demonstrating how to tend beautiful plants in a more eco-friendly way, protecting the soil rather than extracting from it. Continue reading...

The efforts, including restoring grassland in the Georgian steppe, will work in cooperation with local communities to repair biodiversity hotspotsFrom the wilderness of the Finnish boreal forest to the busy Solent estuary, seven landscape restoration projects across Europe have been boosted by more than $26m (£21m) from the Endangered Landscapes Programme (ELP).The projects cover an area 18 times the size of Greater London and include returning nature to the Iberian Highlands, restoring grassland in the Georgian steppe, and replacing coniferous plantations with natural riverine and deciduous forests in the Rhodope mountains in south-east Bulgaria. Continue reading...

Scientists behind car number plate study say ‘potentially catastrophic’ decline must be reversedThe number of insects splattered on vehicle number plates in Britain fell by 64% between 2004 and 2022, according to a survey.Each summer citizen scientists record the number of insect splats on their number plates on an app after a journey. The latest Bugs Matter report, produced by Kent Wildlife Trust and Buglife, found another drop in 2022 compared with 2021, with the long-term decrease jumping by five percentage points. Continue reading...

More than a million acres of state forest contain trees that have succumbed to stressors exacerbated by a multi-year droughtScientists have discovered a record number of dead fir trees in Oregon, in a foreboding sign of how drought and the climate crisis are ravaging the American west.A recent aerial survey found that more than a million acres of forest contain trees that have succumbed to stressors exacerbated by a multi-year drought. Images released by the US Forest Service show Oregon’s lush green expanses dotted with ominous swathes of red. Continue reading...

Report by Australia Institute finds a windfall profits tax could collect almost all this money for public use

Wildlife experts assessed the big cat’s health and said he will not be released back into the wild, with euthanization also an optionThe famous Hollywood-roaming mountain lion known as P-22 is drastically underweight and was probably struck and injured by a car, wildlife experts who conducted a health examination on the big cat said on Tuesday.The male cougar, whose killing of a leashed dog has raised concerns about its behavior, probably will not be released back into the wild and could be sent to an animal sanctuary or euthanized, depending on its health, the California department of fish and wildlife said. Continue reading...

Anton van der Merwe on the relative risks of coal-fired power stations and nuclear ones, and Alan Robertshaw on the local fuel used in his stoveYour article on the harmful effects of burning wood (‘Eco’ wood burners produce 450 times more pollution than gas heating – report, 8 December) highlights a broader problem with risk management in public health. Very different values are placed on human life, depending on the specific risk.The level of air pollutants considered acceptable by the World Health Organization is already dangerous, increasing mortality by 2%. In contrast, the level of radioactivity considered acceptable is 100-500 times below levels that cause a similar increase in mortality. What this means is that a life lost to air pollution is valued 100- to 500-fold lower than a life lost to exposure to radioactivity. Continue reading...

Furuviksparken zoo said the animals ‘tragically’ had to be put down because of the danger to the publicThree chimpanzees escaped from their enclosure in a Swedish zoo for several hours before being shot dead, according to Swedish media, while a fourth was wounded and a fifth was believed to have returned unharmed to the zoo of its own accord.“They are very strong animals and absolutely not domesticated,” Daniel Wikdahl, a police spokesman, told the public broadcaster SVT on Wednesday, adding that it had been the zoo’s decision to shoot the four because of the danger to the public. Continue reading...

Delegates from developing nations leave discussions as divisions grow over who should pay to protect biodiversityDivisions between developed and developing nations over who should pay to protect Earth’s ecosystems are threatening to derail a UN biodiversity summit after a group of developing countries walked out of discussions overnight.In echoes of last month’s Cop27 climate summit in Egypt – where countries agreed to create a new fund to compensate loss and damage from global heating in vulnerable nations – countries from the global south left Cop15 talks on Wednesday due to disagreements over finance. Continue reading...

National Grid push to use devices such as washing machines and dryers at low-demand periods ‘paying dividends’Britons have saved almost £3m by using tumble dryers and other power-hungry devices at quieter times, under a scheme that aims to reduce the strain on electricity networks, National Grid has said.The electricity system operator (ESO) launched an initiative last month to incentivise consumers and businesses to reduce their energy use, by running appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers and tumble dryers before or after particular designated periods when demand was expected to be heavy. Continue reading...

In Montreal, progress on biodiversity issues has been slow. We cannot go on like thisEven by the glacial standards of UN biodiversity negotiations, Cop15 has been slow. We have been in Montreal for more than a week and I am flabbergasted at the lack of progress, especially after how important several world leaders said the summit would be.There is still time to turn it around. But there is no political urgency behind the biodiversity crisis or any desire for transformative change, as far as I can tell. Greta Thunberg’s “blah, blah, blah” criticism of government negotiations on the environment is proving right as things stand, unfortunately. Continue reading...

National park argues attempt by landowner to stop people sleeping overnight could restrict other ‘sedentary pursuits’Banning wild camping on Dartmoor could also end up affecting birdwatching and rock climbing, lawyers for the national park have said, as a landowner tries to stop people sleeping overnight in the park.The judge hearing the case, Sir Julian Flaux, the chancellor of the high court, has said he will give a judgment on the case early next year. Continue reading...

In today’s newsletter: US scientists this week announced progress on a potentially revolutionary source of renewable energy. But there’s still a way to go

Next year’s federal budget will include measures targeted at low-income households to improve energy efficiency

The Cop15 conference in Canada brings together representatives from all over the world with an urgent mission: preventing the breakdown of Earth’s natural habitats and the extinction of the many species we rely onFor thousands of years, the history of humanity can also be viewed as a history of biodiversity destruction. As tools, weapons and industry advanced, so did our ability for environmental destruction. Now the natural world is at a crisis point. Fueled by the climate crisis, we are heading into an age of extinction unless current trends can be reversed.This week at the Cop15 conference in Montreal, Canada, delegates from across the globe have been meeting in an attempt to agree ambitious new targets. As Phoebe Weston tells Michael Safi, the topmost target is the so-called “30 by 30” pledge: a global target to protect 30% of the planet for nature by 2030. But that in itself is proving controversial: Indigenous communities are suspicious of landgrabs by over-reaching governments. And the 30% figure could be easy to game by declaring lands as national parks without addressing the underlying issues. Continue reading...

Cutlery, plates and polystyrene cups reportedly set to be banned in England after a consultationSingle-use plastic items including cutlery, plates and polystyrene cups are reportedly to be banned in England by the UK government after a consultation.Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, is poised to unveil plans to phase out the items and replace them with biodegradable alternatives in the coming weeks, the Financial Times reported. Continue reading...

Negotiators say divisions mean risk is growing of a weak final agreement similar to Denmark summit in 2009Talks to halt the destruction of nature “very much hang in the balance”, sources have said, as environment ministers from around the world begin to arrive in Montreal amid concerns about a lack of Chinese leadership of the Cop15 talks.At the halfway stage of the summit in Canada, negotiators at the UN biodiversity summit have said divisions are contributing to the growing risk of a “Copenhagen moment”, referring to the 2009 UN climate summit when talks ended with a weak final agreement in the Danish capital, not the “Paris moment for nature” leading environmental figures had been calling for. Continue reading...

Dozens of people injured after heavy rain destroys houses and ruins roads in DRC’s capitalAt least 100 people have been killed and dozens injured in widespread floods and landslides caused by heavy rain in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kinshasa.The prime minister, Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, said officials were still searching for more bodies. Continue reading...

Lawyers for landowner Alexander Darwall argue camping is not explicitly mentioned in lawsThere has never been a legal right to wild camp on Dartmoor, lawyers for a landowner have argued in an attempt to overturn the ability for people to sleep on his property – and the whole national park.Despite an assumed right for decades, enshrined under both the 1949 National Park and Access to the Countryside Act and the 1985 Dartmoor Commons Act, a barrister acting for Alexander Darwall, a hedge fund manager, argued that no such right exists as camping is not explicitly mentioned in these laws and does not count as outdoor recreation. Continue reading...

In a moment scientists have dreamed of for 50 years, a single reaction has proved that star power can be harnessed here on EarthThis is a moment that scientists have dreamed of for well over half a century. The US’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) has smashed the longest-standing goal in the quest for carbon-free energy from fusion, the nuclear process that powers stars.Researchers from NIF used the world’s most energetic laser to fire 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy into a millimetre-sized capsule of hydrogen fuel. Reaching temperatures many times those found in the sun’s core and pressures 300bn times those normally experienced on Earth, a wave of nuclear reactions ripped through the fusion fuel, releasing 3.15 MJ of fusion energy – 1.1 MJ more than was put in – over a few tens of nanoseconds. Continue reading...

Fossil fuel subsidies are a stupid idea. We aren’t so much decarbonising our economy as turbocharging its carbon intensityJust as a fish can’t taste the water it swims in, it is hard for Australians to notice how bizarre our climate and energy policy debates have become. We have seemingly abandoned economics, climate science and even opinion polling when it comes to identifying options for reform. The only way forward is what the fossil fuel industry tells us to do. Imagine if we had taken that approach to tobacco control.Think I’m exaggerating? Well, before I try to explain the absurdity of the Albanese government’s latest plan to subsidise the coal and gas industries, let’s take a quick tour of the climate and energy policy options that dare not speak their name. Continue reading...

Generators likely to receive lion’s share of payments worth more than $500m after commonwealth said producers could be paid if costs exceed $125 a tonne

Scientists fear an ecological disaster is playing out in parts of the river because of ‘alarmingly’ low dissolved oxygen levels

Proponents say lasers can be used to generate energy but others say fusion power unlikely to ‘save us from climate change’

BEIS says strategy will reduce replacement costs but cautions there is no guarantee homes will ultimately run on the gasMinisters are considering requiring that all new domestic boilers be “hydrogen-ready” from 2026, as they announced £100m for nuclear and hydrogen projects.The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has launched a consultation on improving boiler standards, and has argued there is a strong case for introducing hydrogen-ready boilers in the UK from 2026. Continue reading...

The buzz phrase aims to emulate the success of ‘net zero’ in climate campaigning. Yet some fear it is too vague, and open to greenwashingOn the wall of the “nature positive by 2030” pavilion at Cop15 in Montreal, children have written notes asking leaders to save turtles, frogs, swallows and wetlands. The message is clear. People don’t want more of the same: “stop the same” and “same is lame”.They are simple, optimistic words that are also popping up in adverts, company pledges and the draft of the globalbiodiversity framework (GBF), which is the text outlining the next decade of UN targets to protect the natural world. Yet some are concerned the term “nature positive” is so hard to define that it opens up another frontier for greenwashing. Continue reading...

Head of offsetting standard rubbishes minister’s claim of Cumbrian mine’s carbon neutrality as ‘absurd’Michael Gove’s justification for approving the UK’s first coalmine in three decades is “obviously nonsense” and has no climate justification, according to the carbon offsetting standard whose credits could be used to make the operation “net zero”.Last week, the levelling up secretary gave the green light for the new mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, which will produce 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year from mining operations alone, not counting the emissions produced when the coal is used. Continue reading...

UK Green Building Council has laid out a three-point plan for the government to considerInsulating Britain’s draughty houses, overhauling the planning system, and preventing housebuilders from selling sub-standard homes would all cut people’s energy bills and help set the UK on track to net zero greenhouse gas emissions, green building experts are to tell ministers.The UK Green Building Council (UKGCB) has laid out a three-point plan for the government to consider, which would reduce energy waste and carbon dioxide, and will present it to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on Tuesday. The charity has assessed current polices on buildings and judged most to be “red-rated”, meaning detailed policy frameworks are missing, flawed, or do not put the UK on track to meeting net zero. Continue reading...

Cross-party report highlights need for greater access to natural world when deciding how to divide up landAccess to green space needs to be prioritised when deciding how to use land, a report from the House of Lords has said.Peers from the cross-party House of Lords land use in England commission have laid out their priorities for a land use framework, which would divide up the land in England and decide where is best for different types of agriculture, as well as carbon sequestration, nature restoration and recreation. Continue reading...

Michael Gove’s decision to approve a new mine is greeted with anger and frustration by Steven Schofield, Keith Fitton, Dr Chris Haughton, Gary Nethercott and Liz FairhurstThe fact that a new coalmine will be the source of massive carbon emissions in a region that has experienced some of the worst floods in living memory, attributable to global heating, is a terrible indictment of generational policy failures (UK’s first new coalmine for 30 years gets go-ahead in Cumbria, 7 December).Cumbria should have been the centre of a vibrant renewable energy sector, recognising the historical decline of both nuclear and coal. Instead, local working people are turned into economic conscripts for a dead industry. Continue reading...

Olivia Blake says not enough of Yorkshire Water’s £242m profits used for infrastructure after gas network floodedA private water company responsible for maintaining a 50-year-old asbestos-cement pipe that burst and left thousands of people in Sheffield without gas should spend “much more” of its £242m annual profits upgrading its infrastructure, an MP has said.With snow on the ground and temperatures below zero, at least 200 households in the area of north-west Sheffield were still without gas on Monday, 11 days after Yorkshire Water’s mains pipe burst and flooded the gas network with more than 1.5m litres of water. About 2,000 homes were initially affected. Continue reading...

Data shows 2.2% of all new UK jobs are classified as ‘green’ – but one-third are in London and south-eastThe number of jobs being created in the renewable energy industry is growing four times faster than the overall UK employment market, it has emerged.Data shows that 2.2% of all new UK jobs have been classified as “green”, although concerns are rising over London’s dominance in the sector. Continue reading...

It used to be that we celebrated the first snowfall, but that’s been replaced by talk of how to survive the winter without going bankruptIt’s pretty bracing, this snow, and I don’t mean literally. I’ve been consuming snow-related headlines and news coverage for decades: typically, they’d say, “Winter Wonderland”, followed by “travel chaos”; occasionally, “travel chaos leavened by magical snowy landscape”. Some years people would try to mix it up a bit – “Snowtravaganza” was a low point. You just felt bad for the poor sod who had to live with having written it.All that has been replaced this year with quite detailed instructions on how to survive the cold without going bankrupt: there was a news segment on the radio about how to turn down the internal temperature of your radiators, if you have a combi boiler. This was not information that lent itself naturally to an aural medium. It was like trying to learn how to remove your own appendix by podcast. Nobody panic – there’s also a website! Except, at the same time, everybody panic: it’s great to take judicious steps to economise in energy-straitened times, but it’s not in any way normal to read experts weighing the relative benefits of wearing a hat indoors and putting mini USB heaters in your shoes.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Country has scrambled to open up new sources of energy since start of Ukraine war

Most venomous creatures store their poison in a gland. Not the stingray, whose venom is in its very tissueWhere do you begin with an animal whose mouth looks like a face, whose face is split into two – half at the top, and half the bottom; who can breathe with either part – from spiracles behind the eyes, or gills behind the mouth; whose teeth are scales; whose scales are teeth-like (denticles)?When stingrays hunt, they lose sight of their prey – their eyes are bad, and their prey is often underneath them. To find and feel clams, mussels, crabs and fish, the rays rely on electroreceptors in their skin, or, as National Geographic puts it, “special gel-filled pits”. They literally inhale their food, gulping down the electric signal. As they do this, they breathe through the spiracles behind their eyes, which work less efficiently than their gills. Do they get a little light-headed, breathing as if through a towel, feeling the electricity brighten, speed up, then die? Continue reading...

The network of EV charging stations across rural NSW is expanding – but not everyone is completely happy about it

The Met Office has weather warnings in place and travel is disrupted, but how unusual is this for the time of year?Cold air from the Arctic has been pushed over the UK. This has been caused by a high-pressure weather system over Greenland and Iceland moving eastwards towards another high-pressure system over Russia. The result is a cold air mass in between being squeezed southwards and over the UK. Weather warnings from the Met Office are currently in place for the northern UK until Thursday. Continue reading...

The target is dominating at the biodiversity summit, but the problem of finding a balance between Indigenous peoples’ rights and conservation remains unresolvedJust as the climate conference focuses on 1.5C, the UN biodiversity conference appears to have found its north star – protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030. From the moment delegates landed at Montréal-Trudeau airport, adverts at the baggage carousel were frank about Canada’s aims for Cop15: achieving 30x30, the tagline for the proposal. The perceived success of the overall conference hangs on this single target, say those who support it.The science is clear that humanity must better protect key parts of the planet. The destruction of forests and other vital ecosystems must stop by 2030 if the world is to meet 1.5C, according to the IPCC. But 30x30 is actually just one of more than 20 targets being agreed at the Cop15 biodiversity conference in Montreal, and it also happens to be one of the most divisive issues on the agenda. Everyone at the summit has an opinion about the most high-profile target and what it should mean: for some it is not ambitious enough, for others it is impossible to enforce, but the main criticism is that area-based conservation violates human rights. Continue reading...

Curbs to protect Ireland’s bogs have gone up in smoke amid soaring costs – theft of trees and woodpiles in Germany also risingThis was supposed to be the year Ireland got serious about protecting its bogs but some of those hopes are wafting up in smoke as households burn peat to save on energy bills.The soaring cost of oil and gas has reinvigorated the ancient practice of cutting and burning turf, a fuel that hurts the environment but can save a family thousands of euros, especially as temperatures drop to freezing. Continue reading...

Three campaign groups challenge plans to award up to 130 new licences for explorationThe UK government is facing a fresh challenge in the courts over plans to award up to 130 new licences for North Sea oil and gas exploration, in the latest attempt to stop ministers’ proposed expansion of the country’s fossil fuel production.Three campaign groups have written to the business secretary, Grant Shapps, explaining the grounds on which they consider the latest offshore oil and gas licensing round to be unlawful. They call for the decision to award the new licences to be reversed, arguing that new oil and gas exploration and development is incompatible with the UK’s own rules and international climate obligations. Continue reading...

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This affecting documentary follows Swiss biochemist Jacques Dubochet as he turns the sudden fame provided by his Nobel win into a force for changeHere is an invigorating portrait of one of Europe’s most distinguished scientists, caught at the very point of morphing into a public intellectual and vehement campaigner. In 2017, Swiss biophysicist Jacques Dubochet won the Nobel prize in chemistry – jointly with Richard Henderson of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and Joachim Frank of Columbia in New York – for his work on cryo-electron microscopy, freezing biomolecules in mid-movement and so rendering them visible for the first time; this was a great leap forward for pharmacy and medicine.The snowy-haired Dubochet, who did his important work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg before returning to Lausanne, is shown to be at first bemused and a little flustered by the hordes of excitable photographers who descend on his tranquil campus, clamouring for interviews and demanding a soundbite explanation of his work for the TV news. But Dubochet is no innocent: he was a committed anti-nuclear campaigner in Germany in the “Atomkraft? Nein Danke” era of the 80s, and the film shows it dawning on Dubochet that he can use his new platform to campaign on the new issue that he’s passionate about – the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Aerial photos from reconnaissance mission reveal effort to smuggle excavators into Brazil’s largest Indigenous territoryThe surveillance plane eased off the runway and banked west towards the frontline of one of Brazil’s most dramatic environmental and humanitarian crises.Its objective: a clandestine 120km (75-mile) road that illegal mining mafias have carved out of the jungles of Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory in recent months, in an audacious attempt to smuggle excavators into those supposedly protected lands.

To succeed, the EPA will need to be truly independent and be given funding and powers to enforce the law across Australia

Jim Chalmers will say global investors increasingly see ‘a new harmony between profit and planet’