Environment | The Guardian

Labor’s climate bill has passed both houses of parliament with support from the Greens and key crossbench senators

BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies spend $750m a year burnishing climate credentials but only 12% of capital on low-carbon developmentBig oil and gas companies are spending tens of millions publicising their environmental work, while only about a 10th of their investment goes into low-carbon development, a report claims.A comprehensive study of public communications from five oil and gas firms by InfluenceMap, a climate finance thinktank, found that 60% of the publicity made at least one claim highlighting the companies’ positive climate actions. But on average, the five companies devoted only 12% of capital expenditure to low-carbon activities – and this included some gas projects. Continue reading...

A new term – renewable gas – has emerged. But to claim the industry is ‘well on the way to decarbonising’ is questionableAustralia’s gas industry and the owners of all the pipes and infrastructure are on a public relations splurge to convince customers to stick with it in the face of the grand decarbonisation challenge.A new term – renewable gas – has emerged, with the industry talking the talk about replacing its fossil fuel gas with alternatives such as hydrogen and gas generated from waste. Continue reading...

Environment Protection Authority’s climate policy plans to reclassify greenhouse gas and offer incentives to transition from fossil fuels

Chris Skidmore urges new PM to ignore ‘tiny vocal minority in Westminster’ arguing against climate targetTop green Conservative Chris Skidmore is to embark on a net zero tour to show that “normal people are getting on with” decarbonisation, and urge the new prime minister to ignore the “Westminster bubble” that is pouring scorn on the climate target.Skidmore, a former energy minister, will on Thursday visit green schemes across north-west England, including a home insulation demonstration in Salford and a peat restoration project in Oldham. Continue reading...

BEIS has been sitting on report delivered in early July into possible effect of fracking in UKLiz Truss must publish a recently completed review on fracking in the UK, green campaigners have urged, amid expectations the new prime minister will lift the moratorium on shale gas drilling immediately.The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has been sitting on a report delivered in early July by the British Geological Survey into the possible effects of fracking in the UK, including the danger of Earth tremors. Continue reading...

Large amounts of rubbish dumped by festivalgoers in Lake Tahoe and Reno irks locals who have to dispose of itBurning Man has become known for wild outfits, utopian philosophy, rich techies and celebrity attendees and, increasingly, frustrated locals in nearby towns.Nearly 80,000 people pour into Nevada’s Black Rock Desert each year for the countercultural festival with community principles that include leaving no trace in the environment and protecting social networks and public spaces. Continue reading...

Matthew Sinclair wrote book tackling ‘burgeoning climate change industry’Global heating could bring benefits, according to one of Liz Truss’s new advisers.As onlookers seek to read the environmental signals being sent by Truss’s new appointments, there has been particular interest in the ideas of Matthew Sinclair, who published Let Them Eat Carbon in 2011. Continue reading...

Environmentalists assess cabinet appointments and say it is ‘a mixed bag’ and there is no clear directionThe spotlight on energy should be the UK’s opportunity to finally adopt a green agenda that sets a clear path to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But Truss’s own pronouncements – more oil drilling, more gas fracking – and many of her cabinet appointments suggest action on net zero could be undermined rather than boosted by her government. As the makeup of her government comes into focus, will it head in the direction environmentalists say the UK urgently needs to travel? Continue reading...

Olaf Scholz says country has enough energy to get through winter after Russia cut gas suppliesThe German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has rejected calls for his government to commit to a longer-term extension of the life of the country’s nuclear power plants and insisted that Europe’s largest economy would have enough energy to get through the winter.Scholz shut down criticism from the opposition conservative alliance and at least one leading economist, who have described his coalition’s decision to keep two remaining reactors in emergency reserve rather than letting them produce electricity, as “madness” while the government refuses to reverse its long-term plan to close down the last remaining plants. Continue reading...

Wildlife cameraman James Aldred’s diary of time spent observing a family of goshawks in the New Forest takes top honourWildlife cameraman James Aldred, who has collaborated with David Attenborough, has been named the winner of the James Cropper Wainwright nature writing prize, while the award’s inaugural children’s writing prize has gone to two brothers writing about climate change.Aldred’s book Goshawk Summer is a diary of his time spent observing a family of goshawks in the New Forest in southern England. Originally commissioned at the start of 2020 to film the lives of the goshawks, Aldred was granted permission to continue when lockdown struck. Continue reading...

European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen also plans cap on price of Russian gasThe head of the EU executive, has set out plans for windfall taxes, mandatory electricity savings and a cap on the price of Russian gas to limit Kremlin revenues used to finance the “atrocious” war in Ukraine.Ursula von der Leyen outlined a five-point plan in response to an energy price crisis, driven by the Russian shutdown of the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline but exacerbated by the climate crisis and lingering effects of the Covid pandemic. Continue reading...

Environmental and faith groups say focus should be on investing in net zero and improving energy efficiencyA coalition of environmental and faith groups has written to Liz Truss urging her to take strong action to tackle climate change, the energy crisis and the steep decline in the nation’s wildlife and habitats.More than 100 groups including the National Trust, Christian Aid, the RSPB and Wildlife and Countryside Link say decisive action is needed to tackle record heatwaves, water shortages, rising energy bills and increasing gas prices. Continue reading...

After months-long rescue effort, wildlife rangers recover three bodies from bottom of 33-metre creviceSpanish wildlife rangers have recovered the bodies of two brown bear cubs and their mother, who is thought to have been the same animal filmed three months ago sending a male bear tumbling to his death down a precipice after he attacked.Rangers and bear experts found the bodies of the female and her cubs at the bottom of a 33-metre crevice inside a cave in the northern Castile and León region on Friday. Continue reading...

Average temperature in August was 1.2C higher than norm, which caused widespread droughtChina recorded its highest temperatures and one of its lowest levels of rainfall in 61 years during a two-month summer heatwave that caused forest fires, damaged crops and hit power supplies, the national meteorological agency said.The average national temperature in August, 22.4C, was 1.2C higher than the seasonal norm, while average rainfall fell 23% to 82mm, the third lowest since records began in 1961, according to Xiao Chan, the vice-director of China’s national meteorological administration. Continue reading...

Group says ‘climate disaster’ vehicles targeted in nine countries including the UK, France and CanadaThe climate activist group the Tyre Extinguishers has claimed its largest night of action yet against SUVs, with more than 600 vehicles “disarmed” across nine countries.Over the night marking six months since the launch of the campaign, which encourages people to covertly deflate the tyres of SUVs, activists took action in the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Canada. Continue reading...

The fall season traditionally brings the highest fire risk to the west, but experts are bracing for even more explosive blazesIt was an explosive Labor Day across California, as an intense, days-long heatwave smashed temperature records, spurred the spread of deadly and destructive wildfires, and bathed cities in a stifling heat even long after the sun went down.The events mark a grueling start of what traditionally make up the highest fire-risk months in the west, with experts bracing for a higher potential of a punishing autumn even after a milder-than-expected summer. Continue reading...

Citizen scientists are mapping which neighborhoods shoulder the highest ‘heat burden’It was a warm July morning in New York City, and at 6am on a Saturday, barely anyone was outside. But huddled in a lush community garden in the Bronx, a dozen volunteers were awake and ready to set out on an important fact-finding mission: are wealthier neighborhoods less burdened by heat?Equipped with heat sensors, this group of citizen scientists were participating in a groundbreaking study: the first ever street level assessment of heat in New York City. The goal was to find differences in neighborhoods – which communities were relatively cool? Which were sweltering hot? – and map the city’s heat inequality. Continue reading...

Northern Territory party conference passes string of motions urging a ban on fracking and an end to gas industry subsidies

Liberal leader says nuclear is needed to support renewables and tells Minerals Council it will ‘add value’ to uranium resources

Measures unlikely to include incentives for people to install devices, which cut bills and emissionsHeat pumps need to be at the heart of any new energy strategy, to keep Britain’s homes warm and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but so far there is little sign of the policy measures needed, one of the UK’s leading heating experts has warned.Liz Truss, who was officially installed as prime minister on Tuesday, has pledged help for households with the cost of living crisis with details to be announced in full this week. Measures are likely to include a cap on energy prices and increased gas production. Continue reading...

Exclusive: 29 MPs and peers urge new PM to recommit to target after her campaign promised to expand oil and gas productionLiz Truss must hold to the legally binding target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, parliamentarians from all of the UK’s major parties have urged in a letter to the incoming prime minister.Truss has pledged to keep the target, but her campaign promises to expand oil and gas production in the North Sea, voices support for fracking, and her opposition to onshore wind and solar farms have led to fears that she could renege on actions needed to meet the target. Continue reading...

Environment and infrastructure chiefs rebuke new prime minister for focusing on fossil fuel solutionsThe government’s independent climate and infrastructure advisers have delivered an unprecedented rebuke to Liz Truss for focusing on attempts to increase the UK’s gas production to bring down energy prices instead of policies to reduce demand.From her first hours in the job, the prime minister has prioritised a series of measures on energy policy to head off the cost of living crisis. Continue reading...

But there remains strong support in many countries for Russian military withdrawal from Ukraine, survey findsThe cost of living is ranked by most voters globally as a more important issue than liberating Ukraine from Russian occupation, but there is still strong support for a Russian military withdrawal, according to a survey showing global preoccupations.Majorities in 16 of the 22 largest countries believe Russia should leave the territory it has occupied in Ukraine, the survey shows. The polling in 22 countries of more than 21,000 citizens also underlines the extent to which the global south is less engaged with the war in Ukraine than Europeans. Continue reading...

Researchers say their prototype produces hydrogen with greater than 99% purity and works in air as dry as 4% relative humidity

Environment secretary responds to criticism of plan to stop ‘literal shit being pumped into rivers and seas’The environment secretary, George Eustice, insisted the government was tackling the millions of hours of raw sewage discharges into rivers and seas in England as MPs demanded answers to a summer of water companies dumping effluent into holiday swimming spots.Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: “Literal shit is being pumped into our rivers and seas. The state of our water network is a national scandal and the government has utterly failed to take action.” Continue reading...

A flawed government plan for workers adds to problems as growers apply to pull down 60 hectares of greenhousesHuge areas of one of Britain’s biggest salad growing hubs will be replaced with housing estates, as growers give up in despair, and cash in their land.The Lea Valley, also known as the cucumber capital and Britain’s salad bowl, is one of the diamonds of the UK’s embattled horticultural sector. The Lea Valley Growers Association (LVGA), seeded through an area running across Greater London, Essex and Hertfordshire, comprises more than 180 hectares (450 acres) of glasshouses, run by 80 growers. The valley should be a jewel in the crown for a country concerned with homegrown industry and food security. Continue reading...

Haarlem’s move is part of efforts to cut consumption after meat was found to contribute to climate crisisA Dutch city will become the first in the world to ban meat adverts from public spaces in an effort to reduce consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.Haarlem, which lies to the west of Amsterdam and has a population of about 160,000, will enact the prohibition from 2024 after meat was added to a list of products deemed to contribute to the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Future of Mount Pleasant project to be decided by federal environment and water minister, Tanya Plibersek, but activists say it is ‘reckless’ and should be rejected

Ban Ki-moon and Laurence Tubiana say greater ambition needed as climate bill debated in Senate

Regulator looking at 26 incidents, with seven involving very large volumes which far exceed amounts subsequently licensed

Ecologists urge people to monitor for platypuses in their area after indications of a ‘severe decline’ in Ipswich

Analyst says tighter tracking of oil shipments needed to avoid Russia bypassing sanctions

Western Georgia sees ‘one-in-1,000-year rainfall event’ as homes and businesses floodMore than 80 million people in the eastern US were under flash flood watches late on Monday, marking still more extreme weather in a country reeling from record heatwaves in some regions, as the US increasingly feels the effects of the climate crisis.In Georgia, the threat of torrential downpours became a reality on Sunday afternoon, spurring a flash flood emergency in western portions of the state, CNN reported. Continue reading...

Janildo Oliveira Guajajara had recently taken part in an Amazon assembly organised by murdered Indigenous specialist Bruno PereiraA rainforest activist from one of Brazil’s leading Indigenous protection groups has been killed just weeks after participating in an Amazon assembly organised by the murdered Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira.Janildo Oliveira Guajajara, a member of the Guardiões da Floresta (Forest Guardians) collective, was reportedly shot dead in the early hours of Saturday near the Araribóia Indigenous territory where he lived. Continue reading...

Liz Reason says engaging the community with energy production can add great value and make nimbyism irrelevantBarbara Chillman writes from Ramsden in Oxfordshire to say that opposing solar farms need not be nimbyism (Letters, 1 September). She could have cited a nearby existing solar farm, Southill Solar. It is in an area of outstanding natural beauty and won a Landscape Institute award for its design.Southill Solar is a 4.5 megawatt solar farm operated by Southill Community Energy (SCE) for Charlbury and the surrounding villages. SCE is a community benefit society that pays its 400 members interest of 5% a year from its surpluses, as well as disbursing grants to the community for projects such as improving the energy and carbon performance of community buildings, funding a sustainability initiative with a local school and buying a polytunnel for a local agriculture scheme supplying fruit and vegetables. Continue reading...

Last two working plants were due to be mothballed, but will be used as emergency reserve into 2023 after Russia cuts off gasGermany is to temporarily halt the phasing-out of two nuclear power plants in an effort to shore up energy security after Russia cut supplies of gas to Europe’s largest economy.The economy minister, Robert Habeck, announced on Monday that the power plants, Neckarwestheim in Baden Württemberg and Isar 2 in Bavaria, are to be kept running longer than planned in order to be used as an emergency reserve until the middle of next year. Continue reading...

Lake Manchar on verge of causing more flooding, says local official, as third of country already underwaterPakistan’s biggest lake is on the verge of bursting its banks after attempts by authorities to drain it in a controlled way failed, a senior local official has warned.In a last-ditch effort to avoid a catastrophe, officials breached Lake Manchar on Sunday, a move they acknowledged could displace up to 100,000 people from their homes but would also save densely populated areas from floods. Continue reading...

The new PM has not set out plans for reducing energy waste; instead she has talked of more oil and gasLiz Truss faces a daunting array of environmental crises, from energy supply to sewage spills on British beaches, with little to show that she has the inclination to take them on.Ben Goldsmith, the chair of the Conservative Environment Network, and a longtime green Tory who was a strong supporter of Boris Johnson, said of the UK’s new prime minister and her defeated rival: “Neither Truss nor Sunak has been known for their passion for nature. Neither has made a name for themselves as an environmental leader.” Continue reading...

Experts and environmentalists say aquifer feeding Doñana national park, a Unesco heritage site, has been overexploited for tourism and to water fruit farmsThe largest permanent lake in Spain’s Doñana national park, one of Europe’s biggest and most important wetlands, has shrivelled to a small puddle as years of drought and overexploitation take their toll on the aquifer that feeds the area and sustains millions of migrating birds.On Monday, experts from Spain’s National Research Council (CSIC) said the Santa Olalla lake, which sits in a Unesco world heritage site, had dried up for the third time in 50 years. Continue reading...

Swathes of rainforest have reached tipping point, research by scientists and Indigenous organisations concludesEnvironmental destruction in parts of the Amazon is so complete that swathes of the rainforest have reached tipping point and might never be able to recover, a major study carried out by scientists and Indigenous organisations has found.“The tipping point is not a future scenario but rather a stage already present in some areas of the region,” the report concludes. “Brazil and Bolivia concentrate 90% of all combined deforestation and degradation. As a result, savannization is already taking place in both countries.” Continue reading...

Scottish first minister and London mayor urge new PM to address cost of living crisis with emergency package

World is ‘in last minute of the 11th hour to save lives’, says aid chief, amid fears that crisis is worse than 2010 famine, when 250,000 diedTwo areas of Somalia are likely to enter a state of famine later this year as the country battles an unrelenting drought and flare-ups of conflict, the UN humanitarian chief has warned.Martin Griffiths said the latest UN food insecurity analysis had found “concrete indications” that famine would occur in the Baidoa and Burhakaba districts of south-central Somalia between October and December unless aid efforts were significantly stepped up. Continue reading...

The EU’s classification of wood fuels is accelerating the climate crisis. Next week, a key vote can change thatNext week the future of many of the world’s forests will be decided when members of the European parliament vote on a revised EU renewable energy directive. If the parliament fails to change the EU’s discredited and harmful renewables policy, European citizens’ tax money will continue to pay for forests around the globe to literally go up in smoke every day.Europe’s directly elected representatives now have to choose: they can either save the EU’s “climate targets” with their legislative loopholes or they can begin saving our climate, because right now, that is not what EU targets are working towards. Continue reading...

Nick Hodgkinson gave up his job when his health worsened, and began campaigning to halt climate change. Now it is his turn to be treatedNick Hodgkinson has a dark sense of humour, which comes in useful during his climate change activism.Take the time the 59-year-old was protesting with Extinction Rebellion outside the Houses of Parliament. Hodgkinson, a retired charity worker, has motor neurone disease (MND). He uses a heavy, motorised wheelchair and has a tracheostomy tube in his neck that connects to a ventilator, meaning he communicates mainly through typing on his phone. Continue reading...

Labor is under pressure on climate policy from Greens who propose ban on high-carbon projects

From defensive flooding to buffer zones, using the natural world in conflict is as old as war itself – now academics have given it a name• Text and photographs by Vincent MundyDuring the early days of the Russia-Ukraine war, the invading force was approaching the Irpin River and the gates of the Ukrainian capital. But the river waters suddenly rose, forcing the Russians to turn back and leaving a trail of abandoned tanks and military hardware. Kyiv breathed again and a wetland ecosystem was reflooded for the first time in more than 70 years.Miraculous as it might have seemed, it wasn’t the hand of God that helped save Ukraine. “That’s warWilding,” says Jasper Humphreys, director of programmes for the Marjan Study Group in the department of war studies at King’s College London, which researches conflict and the environment. Continue reading...

Deanne Criswell makes admission as ‘extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation’ hits GeorgiaFlood maps used by the federal government are outdated, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or Fema, said on Sunday, considering a series of devastating floods caused by excessive rainfall induced by climate change.Deanne Criswell told CNN’s State of the Union: “The part that’s really difficult right now is the fact that our flood maps don’t take into account excessive rain that comes in. And we are seeing these record rainfalls that are happening.” Continue reading...