Environment | The Guardian

Document given to Senate crossbenchers outlines plan to transfer environmental decision-making powers to states and territoriesThe Morrison government is preparing to reject a recommendation it introduce strong national environmental standards to improve protection of Australian wildlife, opting to instead mimic the failing existing laws.A document, seen by Guardian Australia, sets out the proposed standards the government will introduce to underpin its plan to transfer environmental decision-making powers to state and territory governments. Continue reading...

Under 3,000 pairs survive, which each require 7 ha to prosper, with ex-industrial sites ideal for breedingThe willow tit, one of Britain’s smallest and most endangered birds, requires a surprisingly large area of wild land to thrive, according to research.Less than 3,000 pairs of the bird survive, mainly on brownfield sites in former coal mining areas, making it the fastest declining resident species, with numbers plummeting by 94% since 1970. Continue reading...

UK programme will offer 118 young people from ethnic minority backgrounds environment rolesA group of leading environmental organisations are taking part in an employment initiative to make the green movement more diverse.Friends of the Earth, Client Earth, the RSPB and others will take part in a programme that aims to open up the environmental sector to young people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Continue reading...

Cross-party committee says deprived groups contribute least but suffer most from dirty airThe government must set tough new air pollution targets to reduce the stark health inequalities suffered by disadvantaged communities, a cross-party committee of MPs has said.Dirty air causes up to 64,000 early deaths a year in the UK, according to their report, and disproportionately harms those living in deprived areas and those from minority ethnic communities. The fact that these groups contribute the least to air pollution “increases the moral case for action”, said the MPs. Continue reading...

Court rejects claim that contractor is not handling removal of demonstrators safelyA high court judge has ruled against a call to halt the eviction of protesters from a tunnel beside Euston Square on grounds of safety.Seven people are currently occupying the tunnel, in order to raise awareness both of the climate emergency, and the damage they say is being done by HS2. Continue reading...

The Michigan congresswoman represents the state’s most polluted zip code is and is sponsoring a bill to tackle the water crisisRashida Tlaib’s workplace is a hostile environment. Continue reading...

If the Morrison government does not impose emissions reduction policies, exporters may need to buy carbon permits in the EU

95% of £1.5bn set aside to improve houses unspent due to slowness in making grants and paying installersThe government’s flagship programme for a green recovery is in turmoil after it was revealed that hundreds of millions of pounds are being withdrawn from its green homes grant programme.Ninety-five per cent of the £1.5bn pot provided for householders in England to make their homes less carbon intensive remains unspent due to long delays in giving out grants to householders and making payments to installers. Continue reading...

Federal and state governments are being urged to respond to the effects of the climate crisis and to Indigenous rights to waterStates and the federal government should forge a new compact on water policy that explicitly recognises climate change, and which sets “triggers” for rapid policy responses, the Productivity Commission has said.Releasing its draft report on national water reform, the commission has called for a substantial overhaul of the 17-year-old National Water Initiative, a bedrock document that commits the states and federal government to working together on water policy as well as outlining a work program for the future. Continue reading...

Meeting Paris goals would bring health benefits aside from tackling global heating, research saysThousands of lives lost to air pollution, inactivity and unhealthy diets could be saved each year if the UK takes the action needed to tackle climate change, researchers have said.Across the world, millions of lives could be saved if countries raise ambitions on cutting emissions to limit global heating to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, as they have committed to in the global Paris climate accord. Continue reading...

Riders in major cities, especially New York, encounter particle quantities well above safe levelsPeople traveling on subway systems in major US cities are being exposed to unsafe amounts of air pollution, with commuters in New York and New Jersey subjected to the highest levels of pollution, research has found.Tiny airborne particles, probably thrown up by train brakes or the friction between train wheels and rails, are rife in the 71 underground stations sampled by researchers during morning and evening rush hours in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington DC, the cities that contain the bulk of subway systems in the US. Continue reading...

Locals are mourning ‘the big guy’ of Port Douglas after the 4.5-metre croc’s entangled carcass was found in the Queensland town’s inletAn ageing crocodile affectionately known as “the big guy” of Port Douglas has met a tragic end after becoming tangled in crab pots.The hefty reptile, believed to be about 80 years old, was found dead in the Queensland tourist town’s Dickson Inlet on Friday morning. Continue reading...

The fossil fuel giants need to find new ways to reduce emissions, generate growth and maintain their share priceThe world’s biggest oil companies are no stranger to UK waters, but by the end of the decade they will be running more offshore wind turbines than oil rigs.BP has already made a splash with a record-breaking bid to build two giant windfarms in the Irish Sea. The company beat established renewable energy players by offering to pay the Crown Estate £900m a year to develop the sites, more than 15 times the price paid for similar deals in the past. Continue reading...

Sandy, Bedfordshire: Returning to where I used to live, I did not know which garden marked where I last saw a skylark’s ascent, or which factory blocked the flightpath of partridgesBack in the 1980s, we moved into a new estate tacked on to the north end of town. For the resettling Londoners who occupied most of the houses, it must have been a strange country. Tiny dragons roamed by day and pinpricks of lunar light lit the embankment beyond our gardens on summer nights.Within a few years, the lizards were gone (did other cats beside our neighbour’s catch them too?) and the glow-worms glowed no more, their memory outshone all year round by an industrial park and the floodlights of an all-weather sports pitch. Continue reading...

Business leaders call for an aggressive push into lower emission vehicles after ExxonMobil confirms closureThe closure of one of Australia’s few remaining oil refineries is piling pressure on the Morrison government to confront the country’s “severe fuel insecurity” that could be eased with a more aggressive push to lower emissions vehicles, according to a leading business group.ExxonMobil confirmed on Wednesday its Altona refinery in Victoria, operating since 1949, would close and be converted to a fuel import terminal. Continue reading...

Soil Association announces largest year-on-year increase in sales of natural products in 15 yearsOrganic food consumption has soared in the past year across the UK, as people have eaten in more and sought higher quality food, driving the biggest year-on-year increase in sales in 15 years.The organic market, including food, clothing, cosmetics and other products, increased to £2.79bn, a rise of 12.6% on 2019, according to the Soil Association in its annual organic market report, released on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Standoff exposes tensions between large Inuit organizations with power to approve permits and residents of small communitiesA group of Inuit hunters have braved nearly a week of freezing temperatures to blockade a remote iron mine in northern Canada, in protest over an expansion plan they say will harm local wildlife.The blockade, which has prompted solidarity rallies in other Nunavut communities, has also exposed growing tensions between large Inuit organizations with the power to approve development permits – and residents of the small communities where the impact of such projects is felt. Continue reading...

Continue reading...

Pollution from power plants, vehicles and other sources accounted for one in five of all deaths that year, more detailed analysis reveals

Indigenous leaders, environmental groups and stars including Cher and Robert Downey Jr urge White House in letterA coalition of prominent celebrities, indigenous leaders and environmental groups have written to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris urging them to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) which is operating without a legal permit.Actors, musicians and athletes including Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr, Don Cheadle, Cher, Cyndi Lauper, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Aaron Rodgers, Jane Fonda, Joaquin Phoenix and Orlando Bloom are calling on the White House to close down the oil pipeline which poses serious environmental risks to tribal lands, water and wildlife, as well as indigenous cultural and religious practices. Continue reading...

Planning proposal for project near Whitehaven has faced widespread opposition from environmentalists

Sources say resources minister Keith Pitt is trying to ‘strengthen’ the inquiry that stalled after backbench Liberals pushed backThe federal resources minister, Keith Pitt, has broadened the terms of reference for a controversial inquiry into the climate policies of banks and insurers, writing to the joint standing committee on trade and investment growth asking that it now investigate finance for all export industries.Amid public tensions between Nationals and Liberals about Scott Morrison’s positive but non-committal signalling on a net zero emissions target by 2050, sources have told Guardian Australia Pitt is attempting to “strengthen” and reboot an inquiry that stalled at the end of last year. Continue reading...

Growing opposition to the lifting of mining protections in Alberta has forced the Canadian province to backtrackTo the east of the Bluebird Valley ranch, the grasslands of the Canadian prairies extend beyond the horizon. To the west, the fields rise, and then sharply erupt into the Rocky Mountains.Cattle graze the 3,600 hectares (9,000 acres) of the Bluebird, an hour south-west of Calgary, and on hot summer days rancher Jolayne Gardner’s children jump into the chilly waters of a creek that threads the rolling hills. Continue reading...

A 1930s initiative that tackled environmental woes and unemployment could inspire the new administration’s plans to confront the climate crisisNearly a century ago, the US faced unemployment at 25% and environmental woes such as flooding along major rivers and extensive deforestation. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to tackle these emergencies simultaneously by creating the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as part of his New Deal.Related: Trump's assault on the environment is over. Now we must reverse the damage | Jonathan B Jarvis, Gary Machlis Continue reading...

Highbury Corner tunnel built by same crew behind HS2 protest tunnel at Euston, say environmentalists

Shift is caused by the heating of the oceans and other wildlife is suffering more attacksThe climate crisis is pushing great white sharks into new waters where they are causing populations of endangered wildlife to plunge, research has shown.Heating of the oceans, which reached a record level in 2020, has led young great white sharks to move 600km (373 miles) northwards off the coast of California since 2014, into waters that were previously too cold. Over that time there was a dramatic rise in sea otters killed by white sharks, with the number in Monterey Bay dropping by 86%. Continue reading...

NAB to step in to help Port of Newcastle refinance under agreement reported to bind it to reducing carbon emissionsANZ has decided to stop lending money to Australia’s biggest coal port, the Port of Newcastle, after adopting new policies last year that prohibit it entering new finance deals for customers with significant exposure to the fossil fuel.The bank, which had been part of a syndicate of lenders, decided not to participate in the refinancing of hundreds of millions of dollars owed by the port, Guardian Australia has confirmed. Continue reading...

Oil projects over the next decade would destroy hopes of meeting Paris climate goals, thinktank warns

Boris Johnson told exploding wartime ordinance to clear way for windfarms can harm marine lifeJoanna Lumley has urged Boris Johnson to stop the “needless” detonation of wartime bombs at sea because it can cause deafness and even death in vulnerable whales and dolphins.In a letter to the prime minister and his fiancee, Carrie Symonds, who is a conservationist and animal welfare campaigner, the actor describes underwater explosions used to clear ordinance ahead of windfarm construction in the UK as “truly shocking in scale”, with a “devastating impact” on marine mammals. Continue reading...

British Airways to invest in new US plant producing sustainable aviation fuelBritish Airways says it will operate transatlantic flights partially powered by sustainable fuels as early as next year.BA will invest in a new US plant to be built in Georgia by LanzaJet producing commercial-scale volumes of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), made from ethanol derived from agricultural and other waste. Continue reading...

António Guterres says Covid pandemic must not halt preparatory work for key summit in Glasgow

BP among the winners in auction of offshore seabed rights for next decadeThe Queen and the Treasury could receive an offshore windfarm windfall of up to £9bn over the next decade, after an auction of seabed plots attracted runaway bids from energy companies including the oil company BP.The crown estate’s first auction of its seabed licences in a decade will earn the Queen’s property manager £879m a year, for up to 10 years, and clear the way for six new offshore windfarms and enough clean electricity generation for more than 7m homes. Continue reading...

Fifteen teams will get $1m to develop ideas, with a $50m prize awaiting the winnerThe Tesla co-founder Elon Musk has offered a $100m (£73m) fund for inventions that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or oceans.Musk, who has built up an estimated $203bn fortune, said he wanted scientists to make a “truly meaningful impact” and achieve “carbon negativity, not neutrality”. Continue reading...

Researchers use drones to map 30,000 sq metres of Heron Island at high resolution so sea cucumbers can be counted“In the wee hours of the morning … we weren’t too excited to be spooning poo,” reef ecologist Dr Vincent Raulot says.But that’s exactly what he and a team of researchers did to calculate out how much poop was excreted by an estimated 3 million sea cucumbers on the 20 sq km Heron Island coral reef in Queensland. Continue reading...

Rice’s whales already considered endangered by the US with a population estimated at fewer than 100Genetic analysis and a close examination of the skulls from a group of baleen whales in the north-eastern Gulf of Mexico have revealed that they are a new species.“I was surprised that there could be an unrecognized species of whale out there, especially in our backyard,” says Lynsey Wilcox, a geneticist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who helped uncover the new species. “I never imagined I would be describing a new species in my career, so it is a very exciting discovery.” Continue reading...

Swedish environmental groups warn test flight could be first step towards the adoption of a potentially “dangerous, unpredictable, and unmanageable” technologyA proposed scientific balloon flight in northern Sweden has attracted opposition from environmental groups over fears it could lead to the use of solar geoengineering to cool the Earth and combat the climate crisis by mimicking the effect of a large volcanic eruption.In June, a team of Harvard scientists is planning to launch a high-altitude balloon from Kiruna in Lapland to test whether it can carry equipment for a future small-scale experiment on radiation-reflecting particles in the Earth’s atmosphere. Continue reading...

Engineers explore using gentle slopes rather than steep dams or mountains to store electricityHundreds of hills across the UK could be transformed into renewable energy “batteries” through a pioneering hydropower system embedded underground.A team of engineers have developed a system that adapts one of the oldest forms of energy storage, hydropower, to store and release electricity from gentle slopes rather than requiring steep dam walls and mountains. Continue reading...

The debate over the planned Cumbrian coalmine creates a false dichotomy between prosperity and climate protection, writes Tim Crosland, while John Dark calls for investment in alternative fuel productionGaby Hinsliff’s piece (Plans for a Cumbrian coalmine illustrate the Tory dilemma: green policies or jobs?, 4 February), propagates an illusion advanced principally by vested fossil fuel interests: that we have to choose between green policies or jobs. In reality, no such dilemma exists.The International Energy Agency and Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise have published reports which conclude that renewable energy infrastructure projects deliver far more jobs than economic stimulus for business as usual. Continue reading...

Covid has battered the industry, and the race for renewables is speeding up. We are at a tipping pointThe final months of 2020 were a tough end to a tough year, according to BP’s chief executive. But Bernard Looney’s verdict on the worst financial year in the industry’s history is a devastating understatement. It was a period marked by thousands of job cuts, battered dividend policies and record multibillion-dollar losses.BP revealed a full-year loss of $18bn, its first since the Deepwater Horizon disaster more than a decade ago, while US oil giant ExxonMobil reported an annual loss of $22.4bn – its first ever. Shell capped a year in which it slashed its dividend for the first time since the second world war with a debit of almost $20bn. Continue reading...

Deputy PM says he’s focusing on now, not 2050, as Coalition’s climate skirmishes go onThe Coalition is facing an increasingly testy party room as it struggles to land on a climate policy, with the Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, declaring he is “not worried about what might happen in 30 years’ time”.The deputy prime minister said excluding agriculture from Australia’s attempts to reach net zero emissions by 2050 may be one option. Continue reading...

Lazer Sandford came out voluntarily while other protesters against the rail scheme continue to resist eviction

The iconic coastal road has a history of landslides, and experts say ‘it would not be surprising’ to see them happening more frequentlyCalifornia’s Highway 1 has been ruptured by a landslide that is expected to keep 23 miles of the iconic road snaking through the state’s rugged coastal cliffs closed for months.A severe winter rain storm last week caused a 150ft fissure along the picturesque thoroughfare tucked against Big Sur, with concrete, trees and mud falling into the sea below. Continue reading...

Results of England mapping will be used to lobby against ‘bleaching’ of night skyPeople are being urged to take part in a nationwide star count to see if lockdown has had an impact on light pollution.By counting stars within the constellation of Orion, “citizen scientists” will help map the best and worst places in England to enjoy a star-filled night sky, organisers said. Continue reading...

Party calls for flagship renewables scheme to be extended amid significant delays and problems

Protesters ‘in the muck together’ since 27 January say they are in good spirits as they resist evictionPacks of cards and plentiful supplies of chocolate are essential parts of the tunnel survival kit, according to the environmental activists living underneath Euston to protest about HS2 – the high-speed rail link that is due to come into the London station.Since the early hours of 27 January, nine activists from the campaign group HS2 Rebellion have been occupying a network of tunnels they and others dug out. Continue reading...

Papers reveal federal environment department officials warned against preemptively handing approval powers to statesFederal officials warned against transferring environmental approval powers to state governments before a major review of conservation laws was complete, saying it could undermine hopes of substantial reform.Despite the warning, the Morrison and Western Australian governments pushed ahead with plans to give the states greater authority in approving developments before the formal review by former competition watchdog head Graeme Samuel was finished. Continue reading...

The best of the week’s wildlife pictures, from starfish at Dogger Bank to a sky full of migrating birds in Kashmir to the last moments in the life of a zebra brought down by cheetahs Continue reading...

An auction of offshore plots for future windfarms is being held by the Crown EstateThe Queen’s ownership of the British coastline is as old as the monarchy itself. But her right to collect royalties from wind and wave power is much more recent: it was granted by Tony Blair’s Labour government in a 2004 act of parliament.The Crown Estate, which manages the royal property portfolio, is holding the first auction of seabed plots for windfarm turbines in a decade. It emerged this week that bidding has reached record highs as energy firms look to diversify away from oil. Continue reading...

Offshore seabed auction lands £4bn over 10 years for Treasury and Crown Estate prompting calls for green sovereign wealth fundThe Queen and the Treasury are in line for a multibillion-pound bonanza from renewable energy, after a major auction of seabed plots for windfarms off the coasts of England and Wales attracted runaway bids.The crown estate, which manages the monarch’s property portfolio, holds exclusive rights to lease the seabed around the British Isles. With its first auction of windfarm licences in a decade understood to have reached record highs, the Queen’s income is expected to leap by at least £100m a year, while the takings will generate over £300m a year for the Treasury. Continue reading...

Male nano-chameleon, named Brookesia nana, has body only 13.5mm longScientists say they have discovered a sunflower-seed-sized subspecies of chameleon that may well be the smallest reptile on Earth.Two of the miniature lizards, one male and one female, were discovered by a German-Madagascan expedition team in northern Madagascar. Continue reading...