Environment | The Guardian

Report described as ‘sharp wake-up call’ finds recycling has flatlined since voluntary plan was introduced in 2017

Burning vegetation and injecting emissions underground ‘ecologically risky’ and ‘should be avoided’

Tiny proportion of world’s land surface hosts carbon-rich forests and peatlands that would not recover before 2050 if lostDetailed new mapping has pinpointed the carbon-rich forests and peatlands that humanity cannot afford to destroy if climate catastrophe is to be avoided.The vast forests and peatlands of Russia, Canada and the US are vital, researchers found, as are tropical forests in the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia. Peat bogs in the UK and mangrove swamps and eucalyptus forests in Australia are also on the list. Continue reading...

Exclusive: even wealthy nations seen as having good sustainability records use more than fair share of resources, finds studyNo country has managed to meet the basic social needs of its population in the past 30 years without putting undue pressure on the Earth’s supply of natural resources, according to a study.Looking at a sample of 148 nations, research by the University of Leeds found wealthy countries were putting the future of the planet at risk to make minimal gains in human welfare, while poor countries were living within ecological boundaries but underachieving in areas such as life expectancy and access to energy. Continue reading...

First minister says country could join Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance at lowest ‘friend’ tier of supportNicola Sturgeon has been urged to take a tougher stance on phasing out oil and gas by signing up to a new global alliance that calls for an end date for oil drilling.Scotland’s first minister signalled earlier this week that her government was hardening its position on oil and gas production by confirming she did not believe the new Cambo oilfield off Shetland should be licensed. Continue reading...

Frantic rescue operation to save livestock from submerged farms underway, with many animals in desperate need of food

EA and Ofwat begin inquiry after water companies admit possible illegal discharges into riversWater companies are at the centre of a major investigation by the financial and environmental watchdogs after they admitted they may have illegally released untreated sewage into rivers and waterways.The Environment Agency and Ofwat said they had begun an investigation into sewage treatment works, after new checks led to the admission from the water companies. Continue reading...

If someone has planted a time bomb in your home, you are entitled to dismantle it. The same applies to our planetThe climate struggle has entered a new phase. It is marked by a search for different tactics: something that cannot be so easily ignored, a mode of action that disrupts business-as-usual for real, some way to pull the emergency brake. This search has only just begun, but the signs are there.In Berlin, half a dozen young climate activists calling themselves ‘The Last Generation’ recently went on a hunger strike, eventually refusing liquids and becoming quite frail before calling the action off. But there are other things than our own bodies that can be shut down. In conjunction with this summer’s Ende Gelände camp against fossil gas, a group calling itself ‘Fridays for sabotage’ claimed responsibility for rupturing a piece of gas infrastructure and urged the movement to embrace this tactic: ‘There are many places of destruction, but just as many places of possible resistance.’ This followed the development of a veritable archipelago of forest occupations in Germany, some of which have damaged equipment for coal extraction.Andreas Malm is a scholar of human ecology at Lund University Continue reading...

Since the 1980s, fossil fuel firms have run ads touting climate denial messages – many of which they’d now like us to forget. Here’s our visual guideWhy is meaningful action to avert the climate crisis proving so difficult? It is, at least in part, because of ads.The fossil fuel industry has perpetrated a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation, propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policymakers about the climate crisis and its solutions. This has involved a remarkable array of advertisements – with headlines ranging from “Lies they tell our children” to “Oil pumps life” – seeking to convince the public that the climate crisis is not real, not human-made, not serious and not solvable. The campaign continues to this day.Life Magazine, 1962 Continue reading...

Province’s premier issues state of emergency and warns death toll expected to rise as one fatality confirmedTroops have been deployed in British Columbia to help stranded residents and search areas hit by landslides and floods after a powerful storm dumped a month’s worth of rain in two days across a swath of western Canada and the US Pacific north-west.The Canadian government approved a request for federal assistance from the embattled province on Wednesday, the minister of emergency preparedness, Bill Blair, confirmed. Continue reading...

The bill would establish a nonprofit entity to accept conservation donations and allow the environment minister to create carbon credits

Despite mental health and climate concerns, youth believe they can improve the world, survey for World Children’s Day findsYoung people are often seen as having a bleak worldview, plugged uncritically into social media and anxious about the climate crisis, among other pressing issues.But a global study commissioned by the UN’s children’s agency, Unicef, appears to turn that received wisdom on its head. It paints a picture of children believing that the world is improving with each generation, even while they report anxiety and impatience for change on global heating.The majority of young people saw serious risks for children online, such as seeing violent or sexually explicit content (78%) or being bullied (79%).While 64% of those in low- and middle-income countries believed children would be better off economically than their parents, young people in high-income countries had little faith in economic progress. There, fewer than a third of young respondents believed children today would grow up to be better off economically than their parents.More than a third of young people reported often feeling nervous or anxious, and nearly one in five said they often felt depressed or had little interest in doing things.On average, 59% of young people said children today faced more pressure to succeed than their parents did. Continue reading...

Penalties increased for feeding wild pigs as city struggles to control the animals, one of which bit a police officer last weekHong Kong authorities have captured and euthanised seven wild boars as they began a campaign to reduce their numbers in urban areas around the financial centre after one bit a policeman last week.The boar round-up on Wednesday in a district where authorities said some people were spotted feeding them marks a policy shift in controlling the most commonly seen wild animals in the city. Continue reading...

Grower Jeff Knispel of Nippy’s Group says the robbers will not know what they have stolen, which ‘won’t help their cause’

Michael Regan says he aims to ‘hold everyone accountable’ on his ‘journey to justice’ through toxic sites across the southOutside the Tchoupitoulas chapel in the community of Reserve, Robert Taylor waited in the morning sun for a meeting he never thought would happen.After years of campaigning for clean air in his south Louisiana community, a battle profiled by the Guardian for the past two years, Taylor was scheduled to meet with the federal official who holds the power to change his life: the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Continue reading...

Presenter also tells Freeview event he would like to return to British televisionAndrew Neil has said journalists are “basically the PR department of Greenpeace” when it comes to reporting on the climate crisis, as the interviewer indicated he would like to return to British television screens in the future.The presenter, who had a brief but disastrous stint with the rightwing channel GB News, told a television industry conference that there was not enough critical reporting on predictions about the impact of rising global temperatures. Continue reading...

Legislation for compulsory scheme was passed by Holyrood in 2019 but there is no longer launch date, say ministersScottish ministers have been accused of making a “shambolic” mess of their bottle and can recycling programme after admitting they no longer had a launch date for it.Scotland was expected to be the first part of the UK to introduce a compulsory bottle and can recycling scheme for retailers in July next year, but the Guardian revealed on Monday that the target date was expected to be scrapped. Continue reading...

Farmers are assessing their losses, with mayor Phyllis Miller saying the economic cost will be ‘millions and millions of dollars’

Greenhouse gas emissions from hydrogen produced using fossil fuels such as natural gas are ‘substantial’, researchers say

Judge imposes sentences ranging up to six months, saying some of them ‘seem to want to be martyrs’Nine Insulate Britain protesters have been jailed for breaking a court order banning them from protesting on the M25, by a judge who said no lesser penalty “would adequately mark the gravity of the defendants’ conduct”.Ana Heyatawin, 58, and Louis McKechnie, 21, were jailed for three months while Dr Ben Buse, 36, Roman Paluch-Machnik, 28, Oliver Rock, 41, Emma Smart, 44, Tim Speers, 36, and James Thomas, 47, each received four-month sentences. Continue reading...

FTSE 100 energy firm defies call to split off renewables business with extra £1bn of green investments every year to 2026SSE has rebuffed calls to break itself up, and announced a multi-billion pound plan to boost investment across its renewable energy and electricity networks businesses.The FTSE 100 energy firm faces pressure from Elliott Management, an aggressive activist hedge fund, to split off its fast-growing renewable energy business. Elliott has built up a stake in the company this year. Continue reading...

The 43-year-old co-founder of BlackRock’s Big Problem knows he may not have long to live, thanks to the neurodegenerative disease ALS. But that won’t stop him holding the US’s biggest investors to account

Biden administration launching auction of more than 80m acres for fossil fuel extraction that experts call ‘incredibly reckless’Just four days after landmark climate talks in Scotland in which Joe Biden vowed the US will “lead by example” in tackling dangerous global heating, the president’s own administration is providing a jarring contradiction – the largest ever sale of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico.The US federal government is on Wednesday launching an auction of more than 80m acres of the gulf for fossil fuel extraction, a record sell-off that will lock in years, and potentially decades, of planet-heating emissions. Continue reading...

Israeli firm says dairy proteins will be made by microorganisms programmed with DNA instructions“Cow’s milk without cows” will be in Israeli shops by 2023, after a start-up raised a record $13m (£9.7m) in seed funding from investors to help it make traditional dairy products from microorganisms.The Tel Aviv-based Imagindairy, which announced its seed funding result on Wednesday, said the milk it produced would be identical to cow’s milk, but the cow, and her associated methane, would be replaced by fungi or other plant microorganisms programmed to produce milk proteins. Continue reading...

Health authorities investigate whether climate change a factor in spread of disease linked to 45 cases of gastroenteritis since SeptemberWarm oceans, unusual currents and strange weather patterns have coincided with an outbreak of disease that has forced the closure of South Australia’s Coffin Bay farms.Health authorities have said they would now investigate whether climate change was a factor in the spread of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in oysters, which has been linked to 45 cases of gastroenteritis since September. Continue reading...

Fears death toll will rise after record rainfall destroys highways and leaves tens of thousands in the US and Canada without powerAt least one person has been killed and several more are feared dead after a huge storm hit the Pacific north-west, destroying highways and leaving tens of thousands of people in Canada and the US without power.Canada’s largest port was cut off by flood waters, as emergency crews in British Columbia announced on Tuesday that at least 10 vehicles had been swept off a highway during a landslide. Continue reading...

Climate activists have used their bodies, rope and glue as part of ‘destructive action’ to block part of the coal supply chain in the Hunter

Officials have announced that Kemmerer, population 2,600, will be the site of a plant featuring a liquid sodium-cooled reactorA tiny city in the top US coal-mining state of Wyoming is set to become the home of an experimental nuclear power project backed by Bill Gates.The new Natrium nuclear power plant will be located in Kemmerer, officials announced on Tuesday, and will replace a coal-fired plant that is set to close in 2025. Continue reading...

Atmospheric carbon does not care about culture war. Neither should weWhy didn’t we nip climate change in the bud?Nathaniel Rich poses that question in an important article for the New York Times Magazine in 2018 (later published as a book). Continue reading...

Ben Taylor, 27, was one of nine members of group accused of breaching injunction over M25An Insulate Britain activist has told the high court he will “block the highway at the earliest opportunity” if he is not jailed for breaching an order banning the group from protesting on the M25.Ben Taylor, 27, was one of nine members of the climate activist group to appear at the royal courts of justice in London on Tuesday accused of breaching the injunction granted to National Highways by blocking a roundabout on London’s orbital motorway. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Investment would avoid disruption to communities as coastal floods and erosion worsen with rising sea levels, insurance council says

The furry face hiding under a table turned out to be a black-footed ferret, one of only about 600 in the worldA Colorado man had a surprise encounter with the rarest mammal in North America, which he found hiding beneath a table saw in his garage.Reese Nettles had gone out to lift weights when he caught sight of a furry face with soft, curious eyes. Continue reading...

Thick smog envelops Indian capital with pollution levels 20 times higher than deemed healthy by WHOIndia’s capital, Delhi, and several surrounding states have shut schools, imposed work-from-home orders and a full weekend lockdown of the city is being contemplated in an attempt to tackle the deadly levels of pollution that have yet again enveloped the region.Over the past weeks, in what has become a dreaded seasonal occurrence, Delhi has suffered pollution levels 20 times higher than the levels deemed healthy by the World Health Organization and a thick brown smog settled over the city. Continue reading...

The message from companies and regulators has been clear: Americans need meat, and workers need to risk their lives to provide itEarly in the pandemic, Covid outbreaks were rampant in America’s meatpacking plants – the factories that kill, cut and package animals.But the chairman of one of biggest meat companies in the US, Tyson, argued that these factories should stay open to feed Americans. Continue reading...

Irma Galindo Barrios, a member of the Mixtec people, was defending indigenous lands from illegal loggingA Mexican environmental campaigner has been declared missing barely a week after a savage attack on indigenous villagers displaced from the lands she was defending against illegal logging.Irma Galindo Barrios, a member of the indigenous Mixtec (ñuù savi) people who worked to protect forests in southern Oaxaca state, was last heard from on 27 October. She was scheduled to attend a virtual meeting so she could join a state mechanism for protecting journalists and defenders, but did not attend, according to Rosi Bustamante, a US-based activist who had been in close contact with Galindo. Continue reading...

Former US vice president says Australia’s 2050 net zero target ‘has very little meaning’ without nearer term goal

Water breaking banks of Lachlan River as authorities and volunteers race to prepare for flooding

Intensive agriculture’s insatiable thirst for water is turning wetland to wasteland, draining rivers and polluting groundwaterA wetland without water is a melancholy sight. The fish are dead, the birds have flown and a lifeless silence hangs over the place. “Everything you see around you should be under water,” says Ecologists in Action’s Rafa Gosálvez from the lookout in Las Tablas de Daimiel national park. The park has been dry for three years and where there were once aquatic species such as ducks, herons, egrets and freshwater crayfish, as well as tree frogs and the European polecat, now the wildlife has mostly vanished.Las Tablas de Daimiel is a unique wetland in the vast, almost treeless plains of Castilla-La Mancha in central Spain. But the park has had the life sucked out of it to slake intensive agriculture’s insatiable thirst. Continue reading...

Singer and activist supports protest by Kent residents over firm’s continued discharges into seaA water company fined a record £90m for dumping raw sewage is facing a ratepayers’ revolt over its continued discharges into the sea. A non-payment campaign against Southern Water, initiated by four residents of Whitstable in Kent, is understood to be growing.The protesters this week were given the support of Bob Geldof, who lives in nearby Faversham. According to the Kent Online website, Geldof told an audience in the town: “Don’t pay your water bills to Southern Water – they can fuck off. God bless the people of Whitstable. I’m straight there to join them. In fact, I’ll join them immediately.” Continue reading...

Serious damage has already been done as erosion, fires, floods and cyclones increase in intensity

New study reveals huge declines in once common species amounting to loss of one in six birds since 1980There are 247m million fewer house sparrows in Europe than there were in 1980, and other once ubiquitous bird species have suffered huge declines, according to a new study.One of every six birds – a net loss of 600 million breeding birds in total – have disappeared over less than four decades. Among the common species that are vanishing from the skies are yellow wagtails (97m fewer), starlings (75m fewer) and skylarks (68m fewer). Continue reading...

With major flooding from Lachlan River forecast, emergency services warn residents ‘it may be too dangerous to rescue you’ if they remain

When I switched electricity retailers, I didn’t get the cheap offer I wanted, but one of the most expensiveHouseholds in most of Australia have been able to choose between electricity retailers for more than a decade. The main reason is to reduce their bills.But past research by the Victoria Energy Policy Centre (at Victoria University) has found only marginal benefits in switching retailers. Our study of more than 48,000 bills from Victorian households in 2018, for example, found households typically saved less than $50 a year by switching energy providers.Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Continue reading...

Storms forced scorpions from their hiding places into many houses across the province of AswanMore than 500 people have been hospitalised by scorpion stings in southern Egypt after storms forced the creatures out of their hiding places and into houses, state-run media has reported.Over the weekend, the province of Aswan was hit by rare downpours, hail and thunder in which three people died, governor Ashraf Attia said. However, those who were stung by scorpions were given anti-venom doses and were later discharged. Continue reading...

Communities in western Canada and Washington state forced to flee homes after record downpour leads to severe floodsCommunities in western Canada who were forced to flee their homes this summer by wildfires and extreme heat are once again under evacuation orders after overwhelming floods across the region.The heavy rainfall and pounding storms are also taking a toll on the US Pacific north-west, where flooding and mudslides in Washington state have also forced evacuations and school closures. Continue reading...

The Phoenix Islands Protected Area is about the size of California and has been fully closed to commercial fishing since 2015The Kiribati government has announced it will open up one of the world’s largest marine protected areas to commercial fishing, citing economic benefits to its people.The Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) spans 408,250 sq km (157,626 sq miles) – an area about the size of California – and was created in 2006 with the entire area declared a “no-take” zone in 2015, meaning that commercial fishing is forbidden. Continue reading...

Tory benches were sparsely filled as PM addressed the Commons, though Geoffrey Cox was backBoris Johnson did get one thing right in his Commons statement on Cop26. In the previous day’s press conference he had been adamant it had taken place in Edinburgh. Overnight he had been corrected and was now able to accurately locate the climate change summit as being in Glasgow. It was this kind of attention to detail that had made the conference such an outstanding success. Or at least the prime minister’s rose-tinted version of it.Even so, the Conservative benches were noticeably less full than the opposition’s. Either most Tory MPs weren’t so convinced that Cop26 had been a triumph or they still haven’t forgiven Boris for making them look like mugs over the Owen Paterson vote. Or maybe they had got wind of the fact that Johnson had what sounded like the beginnings of a nasty cold – his voice was no more than a muted rasp – and didn’t want to take the chance of picking up his germs. Clearly the last two years have taught him nothing about the spread of infectious diseases. Continue reading...

‘Animals abroad bill’ aimed at clamping down on trophy hunting and harmful animal experiences pushed backA law that will clamp down on trophy hunting and prevent people buying harmful animal experiences such as elephant tours meant to be introduced in parliament this autumn been delayed, the Guardian has learned.The measures should be contained in the animals abroad bill – one of several new pieces of legislation the government has planned to improve animal welfare standards. Continue reading...

Deal to reconvene one year after Glasgow gives vital window to compel countries towards less disastrous emissions plansBringing countries back to the negotiating table with updated national plans on greenhouse gas emissions will now be the hardest task for the UK and the UN for the next year, say developing countries and climate experts.The Cop26 summit ended at the weekend with a resolution for governments to revise their targets for next year. Continue reading...

Low wind speeds on Monday pushed UK price for peak period of 5pm to 6pm to over £2,000 per megawatt hourWholesale energy prices hit the second highest level in at least three years on Monday, adding pressure on suppliers struggling to secure electricity and gas at competitive rates.Low wind speeds were to blame for pushing wholesale energy prices for the peak period between 5pm and 6pm over £2,000 per megawatt hour, only the second time they have surpassed this level since 2018. Continue reading...