Col Faulkner, 68, owns the only house in Wollar that hasn’t been bought up by US-based miner PeabodyBev Smiles usually turns up at least an hour before the start of any functions at Wollar’s community hall – a spot for many a dance and committee meeting over the years.“We have to get in early with leaf blowers to get an inch of dust off the floor – every surface in the hall is black,” Smiles says. “That’s what people’s kitchens are like.” Continue reading...

The power station on the banks of the Hudson has no place in the state’s plans switch to renewables but critics say in the short term it means lost jobs and increased emissionsAmerica’s energy past and future was on display on Friday at Indian Point, a nuclear plant 25 miles north of New York City that has been producing electricity since 1962.Related: Don't believe hydrogen and nuclear hype – they can’t get us to net zero carbon by 2050 | Jonathon Porritt Continue reading...

A recent spate of deaths in the region has caused concern, but scientists say it may not be a sign of catastropheThe 45ft carcass lay belly-up in the surf at Fort Funston beach, just south of San Francisco, drawing a small crowd of hikers and hang gliders. The stench lingered on the evening breeze as seabirds circled the animal, a juvenile fin whale.The whale was the fifth to wash ashore in the area this month. The other four were gray whales – giant cetaceans who migrate an astounding 11,000 miles each year from Alaska to Baja and back – all found on beaches near the city over a span of just eight days. Continue reading...

Mountain glacier melt contributes more than a quarter of extra volume to the world’s oceans, disrupting ancient cycles of creation“If glaciers are what you are after, that’s the place for you.” The speaker was an prospector passing through Fort Wrangell, Alaska, in 1879. The subject was a remote bay, flanked by rugged walls of ice and filled with floating bergs. The listener was the Scottish-American environmental philosopher John Muir, who needed no further encouragement to set out in a canoe soon after with a large stock of provisions, blankets and a determination to visit the frozen wonderland.It was October. Winter was approaching. The territory ahead was largely uncharted. His five travelling companions – four members of the Hoonah Tlingit people and a missionary – were warned the dangers were so great they would never return. Muir was undeterred. “The icy regions burned in my mind,” he noted. “I determined to go ahead as far north as possible.” Continue reading...

A novel lawsuit is taking advantage of a local ‘rights of nature’ measure passed in November in effort to protect wetlandsA network of streams, lakes and marshes in Florida is suing a developer and the state to try to stop a housing development from destroying them.The novel lawsuit was filed on Monday in Orange county on behalf of the waterways under a “rights of nature” law passed in November. It is the largest US municipality to adopt such a law to date. Continue reading...

Mass weighing equivalent of 250 cars not expected to be cleared until June, says water companyEngineers are working around the clock to clear a “monster” fatberg 1km long which is clogging a sewer in Birmingham.The blockage is not expected to be removed until June, water services company Severn Trent said in a statement, adding that the fatberg was about four miles east of the city centre, in Hodge Hill. Continue reading...

Wood stoves and open fires a big source of PM2.5, identified by WHO as most serious air pollutant for human healthRestrictions on the sale of coal, wet wood and manufactured solid fuels that can be burned in the home have come into force in England as the government attempts to cut air pollution.Wood-burning stoves and open fires can still be used from 1 May but must be fuelled by cleaner alternatives, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said. Continue reading...

Analysis: glaciers are on average 8 metres thinner and many have vanished completely because of global heating

National Trust to slow Goldrill Beck in Ullswater Valley, allowing nature to mitigate stormsA river in the Lake District is getting its curves back in order to reduce the risk of flooding, with storm damage and landslides set to become more widespread in the national park by 2060.Homes and businesses in the Ullswater valley have been devastated by floods in recent years. Storm Desmond in 2015 saw houses and hotels submerged, bridges collapsed and key infrastructure undermined. Continue reading...

Commercial beekeepers in the US say counterfeit honey from Asia is forcing down prices and pushing them to financial collapseImports of cheap, fake honey from Asia are pushing American beekeepers to financial collapse, according to a lawsuit.Thousands of commercial beekeepers in the US have taken legal action against the country’s largest honey importers and packers for allegedly flooding the market with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of counterfeit honey. Continue reading...

International team of researchers also found that deforestation rose nearly four-fold in 2019The Brazilian Amazon released nearly 20% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past decade than it absorbed, according to a startling report that shows humanity can no longer depend on the world’s largest tropical forest to help absorb manmade carbon pollution.From 2010 through 2019, Brazil’s Amazon basin gave off 16.6bn tonnes of CO2, while drawing down only 13.9bn tonnes, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change. Continue reading...

NSW mine’s owner Whitehaven Coal allowed to buy extra properties for offsets in what’s being called a ‘lukewarm’ victoryEnvironmental activists have dropped a legal challenge to Whitehaven Coal’s Maules Creek coalmine in New South Wales after a new agreement on environmental offsets was approved in what has been described as a “lukewarm victory”.South East Forest Alliance and its legal representative, the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO), say the decision vindicates community members who accused Whitehaven of not acquiring enough critically endangered land to compensate for destroying habitat. . Continue reading...

State officials will truck the young fish to the ocean, with the waterways they use to travel downstream historically lowCalifornia officials will truck more than 15 million young salmon raised at fish hatcheries in the state’s Central Valley agricultural region to the Pacific Ocean because projected river conditions show that the waterways the fish use to travel downstream will be historically low and warm due to increasing drought.Officials announced the huge trucking operation on Wednesday, saying the effort is aimed at ensuring “the highest level of survival for the young salmon on their hazardous journey to the Pacific Ocean”. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Frans Timmermans says older people need to make sacrifices to protect the future

Indigenous leaders are suing the Canadian government for not providing clean water – and ministers admit they have failedCurve Lake First Nation, a forested community in southern Canada, is surrounded on three sides by fresh water.But for decades, residents have been unable to safely make use of it. Wary of crumbling infrastructure and waterborne illness, the community instead relies on shipments of bottled water. The community’s newly elected chief, aged 34, has lived her whole life without the guarantee of clean water flowing from the tap. Continue reading...

Study finds more relatively warm water is reaching Thwaites glacier than was previously understoodAn Antarctic glacier larger than the UK is at risk of breaking up after scientists discovered more warm water flowing underneath it than previously thought.The fate of Thwaites – nicknamed the doomsday glacier – and the massive west Antarctic ice sheet it supports are the biggest unknown factors in future global sea level rise. Continue reading...

The president has touted the benefits of a boom in electric cars – but as states move to phase out new polluting vehicles his administration is pressed to go furtherJoe Biden’s administration, seeking deep cuts to planet-heating emissions, is facing pressure to take a previously unthinkable step: declare the end of the internal combustion engine in the US.Washington state has moved to call time on the age of gasoline and diesel cars, with the legislature passing a goal that new car sales be only zero-emission vehicles from 2030, including out of state purchases that are then imported. The legislation now awaits to signature of Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat who previously ran for president on the climate crisis platform. Continue reading...

There are ambitious new goals in the US and UK. But governments also need to decarbonise the economy and rethink how it’s plannedLast week was a critical time in the global response to the climate emergency: the US vowed to cut its emissions by at least 50% by 2030, while the UK government committed to reducing emissions by 78% by 2035, relative to a 1990 baseline. Both announcements were important steps that reflected the significance of one particular tool in climate governance: the target. From the legally binding targets in the UK’s Climate Change Act (2008) to those of the 2015 Paris agreement, targets define a sense of direction and signpost of ambition. Alone, however, targets are not enough. We need more than just targets to transition to a post-carbon future. We need planning.Despite what free-market economists may suggest, markets are not “free”, nor do they emerge spontaneously. They are created and sustained by governments, laws and political institutions, which plan how they operate and whose interests they serve. What’s more, the global economy, far from being organised by the anarchy of competition, is itself structured by institutions with vast planning power. Targets may dominate the headlines, but it’s these institutions of planning that are central to the climate struggle. Continue reading...

Three claimants in their 20s say their rights to life have been breached because of inadequate roadmap to solve emergencyThe UK is being taken to court by three young people who claim their human rights are being breached by the government’s failure to act decisively on the climate crisis.Adetola Stephanie Onamade, Marina Tricks and Jerry Amokwandoh, all students in their early 20s, will on Saturday ask for a judicial review of government actions to cut national carbon emissions. Continue reading...

A team of scientists discovered tens of thousands of barrels containing what is believed to be chemical wasteThe discovery of tens of thousands of underwater barrels containing what scientists believe to be chemical waste has raised alarm and reopened scrutiny into a history of toxic dumping that persisted off the California coast into the 1970s.A team of scientists announced this week that they had found more than 25,000 containers, many of which they believe to be DDT waste, which has been linked to cancer and disease in humans and mass die-off events in the natural world. The barrels cover a seafloor area double the size of Manhattan off the coast of the Santa Catalina Island, near Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Operator says it may need to spend £350m over two years to repair cable damage caused by seabed rocksThe Danish wind power firm Ørsted has warned that up to 10 of its giant offshore windfarms around the UK and Europe will need urgent repairs because their subsea cables have been eroded by rocks on the seabed.The renewables firm, which is behind plans to build one of the world’s largest offshore windfarms off the coast of Grimsby, told investors it might need to spend up to DKK3bn (£350m) over the next two years to repair the cables. Continue reading...

Judges order government to strengthen legislation before end of next year to protect future generations

Photovoltaic ground installation part of move to increase capacity close to where it’s most needed, in citiesBarcelona city council has installed Spain’s first photovoltaic pavement as part of the city’s drive to become carbon neutral by 2050.The 50 sq metres of non-slip solar panels, installed in a small park in the Glòries area of the city, will generate 7,560kW a year, enough to supply three households. Continue reading...

Environmental protesters cleared of aggravated trespass at newspaper printing plant last yearThree more Extinction Rebellion protesters have been acquitted for their part in demonstrations that blockaded newspaper printing plants last year.Katie Ritchie-Moulin, 22, Harrison Radcliffe, 21, and Luca Vitale, 22, were among 81 people arrested outside printers in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and Knowsley, Merseyside, on 4 September. Continue reading...

Congressional Democrats move to reinstate regulations designed to limit potent greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas fieldsCongressional Democrats are moving to reinstate regulations designed to limit potent greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas fields, as part of a broader effort by the Biden administration to tackle climate change.The Senate approved a resolution Wednesday that would undo an environmental rollback by Donald Trump that relaxed requirements of a 2016 Obama administration rule targeting methane emissions from oil and gas drilling. Continue reading...

Peter Gleick argues there’s an urgent need to reshape our relationship to water: ‘There is enormous untapped potential for conservation’California is once again in a drought, just four years after the last dry spell decimated ecosystems, fueled megafires and left many rural communities without well water.Droughts are a natural part of the landscape in the American west, and the region has in many ways been shaped by its history of drought. But the climate scientist Peter Gleick argues that the droughts California is facing now are different than the ones that have historically cycled through the Golden State. Continue reading...

Sipekne’katik chief Mike Sack says his First Nation plans to open a lobster fishery in Nova Scotia in defiance of government rulesAfter a violent clash over lobster fishing on Canada’s east coast last year, a First Nations chief says he will request United Nations peacekeepers to keep his people safe on the water this summer – predicting tensions will reach a boiling point.When the Sipekne’katik First Nation sought to harvest lobster outside of the fishing season defined by federal authorities, commercial harvesters launched a series of protests that turned physical when traps were removed, harvesters assaulted and lobster pounds vandalized. Continue reading...

Some of the more than 2,000 taken to court after UK demonstrations tell why they felt impelled to act

More than 400 climate scientists sign letter that says activists are being targeted at pivotal time in fight against global heating

Exclusive: loss is equivalent to more than 13,200 cubic kilometres of water or 10m Wembley Stadiums

Result is better than expected after firm warned Texas winter storm this year would take heavy toll

Much-hated insects are voracious predators of pests, produce powerful antibiotics and pollinate plantsFor those who have asked what the point of wasps is, there is now a comprehensive answer. They are voracious predators of pest insects, produce powerful antibiotics in their venom, pollinate plants and even make a nutritious snack.The benefits to humans of the much-hated insects are revealed in the first major scientific review of the ecosystem services they provide. It focused on the 33,000 known species of hunting wasps, which carry stings and live in every corner of the world. Continue reading...

NSW opposition calls for wider inquiry into state’s environment offsets scheme in wake of Guardian Australia revelationsFederal Labor is demanding the Morrison government “urgently explain” more than $30m in offsets it bought for the western Sydney airport, joining the Greens in calling for an investigation.And the New South Wales opposition wants a wider inquiry into the management of the state’s environmental offsets scheme and tens of millions of dollars in offset credits purchased from properties linked to consultants whose company advised the government on development in western Sydney. Continue reading...

People of color disproportionately affected by PM 2.5 in pretty much all states and all urban areas, study findsWhether they’re breathing factory fumes and truck exhaust in urban centers or choking on dust on rural farm roads, people of color face exposure to more sources of harmful fine particle air pollution than white people, a new, comprehensive national study shows.A team of environmental researchers from universities across the US sought to find the air pollution sources that contribute the most to racial disparities. Their hope was that the information could help shape policy to reign in those sources of pollution. Continue reading...

Australian scientists say shading reef and controlling coral-eating starfish can only be effective if strong action is taken to reduce emissionsShading corals and deploying more heat-resistant species across the Great Barrier Reef on an as-yet untested scale could buy the world heritage site another two decades, according to a study led by Australian government scientists.The scientists said combining “life support” interventions such as cloud brightening – which involves spraying sea water to make low-altitude clouds more reflective – with better management of a coral-eating starfish could help delay “precipitous declines” caused by global heating. Continue reading...

Gruesome 2013 video shows Wayne LaPierre repeatedly failing to finish off the endangered animal from barely five yards awayIn his National Rifle Association biography, Wayne LaPierre boasts of his prowess as “a skilled hunter”.But a newly surfaced video of the gruesome 2013 killing of an endangered savanna elephant in Botswana has revealed a different truth: the gun group’s longtime leader and self-styled role model for big-game hunters is a lousy shot. Continue reading...

Work will stop until 21 August after the discovery of an Anna’s hummingbird nest during construction of TransMountain pipelineActivists and protesters have tried fruitlessly for years to stop the construction of the controversial TransMountain oil pipeline in western Canada.Now, a tiny hummingbird have succeeded where others have fallen short, forcing construction on the multibillion-dollar project to halt for the next four months. Continue reading...

Glacier melt contributing more to sea-level rise than loss of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, say expertsThe melting of the world’s glaciers has nearly doubled in speed over the past 20 years and contributes more to sea-level rise than either the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets, according to the most comprehensive global study of ice rivers ever undertaken.Scientists say human-driven global heating is behind the accelerating loss of high-altitude and high-latitude glaciers, which will affect coastal regions across the planet and create boom-and-bust flows of meltwater for the hundreds of millions of people who live downstream of these “natural water towers”. Continue reading...

Unfounded claims do not reflect president’s proposals to tackle global heating, which make no mention of meat consumptionAt a major summit hosted by Joe Biden last week, a procession of world leaders fretted over the spiraling dangers of the climate crisis, with some pledging further cuts to planet-heating emissions, others touting their embrace of electric cars and a few vowing the end of coal.In the US, however, Biden’s political opponents were focused on one pressing matter – meat. Continue reading...

Malcolm Hole spent seven years working on island of volcanological significanceA geologist who spent seven years working in the Antarctic has had a peninsula on the continent named after him in recognition of his work.Dr Malcolm Hole became only the second person to visit Rothschild Island when he arrived there in 1985 and part of it has now been called the Hole peninsula. Continue reading...

Environmental groups claim planned Suffolk power station will devastate marine life and key bird habitatMore than 500 million fish, including protected species, could be sucked into the cooling system of a proposed £20bn nuclear power plant in Suffolk if construction goes ahead, environmental campaigners say.A local campaign group, Together Against Sizewell C (Tasc), claims the subsequent deaths of millions of fish is “inhumane and unacceptable” and flies in the face of the government’s green agenda. Also opposing the development, the bird conservation group RSPB expressed concern over predicted levels of fish loss on the marine birds that feed on them. Continue reading...

Mick de Brenni claimed he was blindsided when Stanwell chief executive Richard van Breda said company was pivoting from coal to renewablesThe board of Queensland state-owned power generator Stanwell corporation spent 18 months planning a transition strategy to pivot from coal to renewables, before the unexpected resignation of its chief executive last week.Guardian Australia understands Richard van Breda quit Stanwell after the state energy minister, Mick de Brenni, complained to board members he was blindsided by an announcement – revealed by the Guardian – that rapidly changing market conditions would probably force the scaled-down operation of its coal plants. Continue reading...

Expedition spent 24 days clearing 10 miles of shoreline in Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, collecting 94,472lb marine debrisIn a span of just over three weeks, more than 47 tons of plastic waste were removed from America’s largest protected marine reserve, sometimes directly off animals, a stark reminder of the scourge of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.Related: Idaho bill seeks to kill more than 1,000 wolves Continue reading...

Scale of aid cut emerges in leaked FCDO memo, prompting experts to describe it as ‘a national shame’The UK is to slash funding for lifesaving water, sanitation and hygiene projects in developing nations by more than 80%, according to a leaked memo.The cuts have been described as “savage”, “incredible” and “a national shame” by experts highlighting that sanitation and handwashing is a key line of defence during the coronavirus pandemic. The reduction to the bilateral aid budget was revealed as details emerged of cuts in the foreign aid budget. Continue reading...

US has broken promises as Indigenous Americans lack access to safe water, a crisis worsened by Covid-19The US government’s haphazard approach to providing Indigenous American tribes with clean drinking water and sanitation must be radically transformed to tackle decades of underfunding and neglect, according to a new report.An estimated one in 10 Indigenous Americans lack access to safe tap water or basic sanitation – without which a host of health conditions including Covid-19, diabetes, and gastrointestinal disease are more likely. Continue reading...

State environment department says proposal presents ‘a number of unacceptable risks’ due to its Rockhampton locationClive Palmer’s plan to build an open-cut coalmine 10km from the coast of the Great Barrier Reef has been deemed “not suitable” by the Queensland government with its assessment now being sent to the federal environment minister.Palmer’s Central Queensland Coal project, which wants to mine up to 18m tonnes of coal a year from two pits near Rockhampton, posed “a number of unacceptable risks”, the Queensland Department of Environment and Science has decided. Continue reading...

Don’t be alarmed if you spot one in your compost heap, they are harmless, except to pests like slugsIf it looks like a snake but blinks, it is a slow worm: Anguis fragilis. That is the helpful hint for the squeamish who might worry about the appearance of a greyish brown or black legless lizard in their garden compost heap. Your reaction should be delight, as slow worms are entirely harmless and a gardener’s friend; they eat slow-moving prey like slugs and other garden pests.They are the most likely of Britain’s reptiles to be found in gardens but like any damp and boggy place on the edge of woodland or in tufty grasslands. They are most numerous in Wales and the West Country but can appear anywhere in Britain although populations can be patchy. Continue reading...

MPs say Treasury has not set out how tax system will help UK meet target to cut emissionsThe Treasury cannot explain how it will manage declines in tax revenues worth £37bn from fossil fuels as the UK shifts to a clean economy, MPs have warned.A report from the influential parliamentary public accounts committee also warned that the Treasury had not set out how the tax system was going to help the government meet the target to cut emissions to “net zero” by 2050. Continue reading...

People were uncertain the fish existed, until citizen scientists made an underwater recording