Aboriginal title holders are alarmed that Fortune Agribusiness is seeking to use more than 40,000 megalitres of water each year for irrigationA private agribusiness is seeking to use more than 40,000 megalitres of water each year in arid central Australia to irrigate what it says will be one of the country’s biggest fruit and vegetable operations.If granted, it would be the single largest private water licence allocation in the Northern Territory, which does not currently have a water pricing regime and does not charge developers for water. Continue reading...

Administration finishing off regulatory moves to lock in drilling, loosen wildlife protections and roll back pollution standardsDonald Trump is using the dying embers of his US presidency to hastily push through a procession of environmental protection rollbacks that critics claim will cement his legacy as an unusually destructive force against the natural world.Related: Trump officials rush plans to drill in Arctic refuge before Biden inauguration Continue reading...

Photovoltaic panels pay off for those who get feed-in tariffs but home installations have dried up without incentivesThis year’s electricity output from the solar panels on the house roof is already well past the previous record since their installation 10 years ago. Part of the reason is the exceptionally sunny spring, plus the lack of pollution following lockdowns. Particularly significant in Bedfordshire is the curtailment of air traffic that in certain weather conditions used to leave contrails crisscrossing an otherwise clear blue sky.A decade ago photovoltaic solar panels were expensive and generous government feed-in tariffs were needed to encourage the industry. Those who took the plunge should have got their money back by now and, if my local estate agent is to be believed, added several thousand pounds to the value of their property. Solar panels give a home an income, often more than £1,000 a year. Continue reading...

Objection to virtual meetings threatens next year’s conference in China, say environmental campaignersBrazil has been accused of obstructing global efforts to protect nature following a row over the use of virtual meeting technology to overcome Covid-19 restrictions.The dispute threatens a key United Nations conference in Kunming, China, next year, which aims to set new targets to protect the Earth’s natural life support systems. Continue reading...

The best of the week’s wildlife pictures from around the world, including baby bears and a stowaway owl Continue reading...

Pork giant Smithfield has settled with North Carolina residents who sued over stench, flies and truck traffic from Kinlaw FarmsA US judge has issued a blistering condemnation of industrial farming practices. The judgment comes as one US meat giant finally settles after a six-year legal battle with plaintiffs who sued the company over the stench, flies, buzzards and truck traffic coming from its industrial swine farms in North Carolina.J Harvie Wilkinson III, one of the judges in a case that pitted locals against the Smithfield subsidiary formerly known as Murphy-Brown, decried the “outrageous conditions” at Kinlaw Farms, the operation at the center of the lawsuit – “conditions that there is no reason to suppose were unique to that facility”. Continue reading...

Climate experts say UK should aim to cut emissions by more than 70% as crucial summit loomsBoris Johnson is facing a fresh test of his green commitments as the UK prepares to submit its national plan on future carbon emissions, before crucial UN climate negotiations.Pressure is growing on the prime minister to come up with an ambitious national target – known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC) – on cutting emissions substantially by 2030, because the UK will host the postponed Cop26 summit next year. Continue reading...

Ancient lungwort translocated from fallen oak to nearby trees in trust’s largest-ever moveJust as an art gallery would protect its collection of fine and rare paintings, the National Trust is attempting to save one of England’s rarest lichens.The lungwort, a survivor of the ancient wildwood that grew in Britain after the last ice age, has been painstakingly transferred from a fallen oak to nearby trees. Continue reading...

Research finds young people in England feel growing distress about the future of the planetMore than half of child and adolescent psychiatrists in England are seeing patients distressed about the state of the environment, a survey has revealed.The findings showed that the climate crisis is taking a toll on the mental health of young people. The levels of eco-anxiety observed were notably higher among the young than the general population, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which has just launched its first resources to help children and their parents cope with fears about environmental breakdown. Continue reading...

Premier will revert to old land-clearing laws until Coalition can draft new policyGladys Berejiklian has sacked a parliamentary secretary for voting against her government’s controversial land clearing bill and said she will revert to old koala protection laws until a new policy can be drafted.The New South Wales premier made the comment on Thursday night after the Liberal MP Catherine Cusack crossed the floor to send the local land services amendment (miscellaneous) bill to a committee to debate proposed amendments, delaying its passage until next year. Continue reading...

Business secretary urged to lead by example before UN climate talks in GlasgowLabour has accused the government of being reckless with Britain’s international climate credibility by continuing to consider financial support for overseas fossil fuel projects before UN climate talks in Glasgow next year.The shadow climate minister, Matthew Pennycook, called on the government to end all financing for new foreign fossil fuel projects immediately or risk undermining its own commitment to tackling the global climate crisis. Continue reading...

Climate groups plan to camp in Washington DC in protest of Biden’s hires of key staff with connections to the oil and gas industryProgressive climate activists plan to occupy the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC today in protest of Joe Biden’s early hires of key staff with connections to the oil and gas industry. Continue reading...

Farmers must still destroy animals before midnight, despite health ministry saying variant has not been found since SeptemberThe Covid-19 mink variant that led to a cull of all mink in Denmark and the resignation of the country’s agriculture minister on Wednesday, is “very likely extinct”, said Denmark’s health ministry.The cull was sparked by research from one of Denmark’s public health bodies, the Statens Serum Institut (SSI), which showed that a mink variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus called C5 was harder for antibodies to neutralise and posed a potential threat to vaccine efficacy. Continue reading...

After single sighting in 20 years of surveys, new expedition and analysis bring 58When the Antarctic blue whale – the largest and loudest animal on the planet – was all but wiped out by whaling 50 years ago, the waters around South Georgia fell silent.Twenty years of dedicated whale surveys from ships off the sub-Antarctic island between 1998 and 2018 resulted in only a single blue whale sighting. But a whale expedition this year and analysis by an international research team resulted in 58 blue whale sightings and numerous acoustic detections, raising hopes that the critically endangered mammal is finally recovering five decades after whaling was banned. Continue reading...

Lord Goldsmith says Britain, the second biggest per capita producer of plastic waste, could play leading role in tackling crisisBritain has thrown its weight behind a new global agreement to tackle the plastic pollution crisis, which Lord Goldsmith said would go “far beyond” existing international agreements.This week, the Guardian revealed there is growing support for such a treaty internationally, but that neither the UK nor the US, the world’s biggest per capita producers of plastic waste, had yet pledged their support. Continue reading...

Expecting the free market to fix global warming is like trying to pound nails with a sawThe massive wildfires that have been rampaging across the American west this year are not purely natural disasters. They are partly products of the unnatural disaster of climate change – “unnatural”, in that the ultimate responsibility for global warming belongs not to physics but to our economic system. Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank, calls climate change the “greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen”. Sadly, climate change is only one – albeit a whopper – of the countless market failures that degrade our lives.Related: Hurricane Iota: at least six killed and 60,000 evacuated in Nicaragua Continue reading...

Climate advocates urge Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond to leverage his new position to help bring attention to their plightAs Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond takes a senior role in the incoming Biden administration, climate advocates and leaders in the fight against toxic air pollution in his district have warned of his history of poor engagement with vulnerable communities and his ties to the oil and gas industry.But they also have urged him to leverage his new position to help direct attention to their plight. Continue reading...

In his new book, marine biologist and photographer Richard Smith reveals the tiny, magical world of pygmy seahorses, one of the most elusive fish on the planetAfter spending hundreds of hours observing pygmy seahorses for my doctorate, I knew exactly when Tom, a Denise’s pygmy seahorse in Sulawesi, Indonesia, would give birth. He swam with great resolve (1) from where he slept each night with his partner, Josephine, against the current, to the edge of the gorgonian seafan (a type of coral) that the two inhabited.He never faltered. At the edge of the coral, the current was at its strongest, offering the greatest chance of sweeping his offspring out to the relative safety of the open ocean. Continue reading...

Saw-whet owl was found tired and hungry in the branches of the huge Norway spruce at famous New York landmarkIt wasn’t quite a partridge in a pear tree, but a worker helping set up Rockefeller Center’s Christmas tree found a holiday surprise – a tiny owl among the massive branches.

Carvey Maigue, from the Philippines, used a substance made from crop wasteA novel material made from rotting fruit and vegetables that absorbs stray UV light from the sun and converts it into renewable energy has landed its designer the first sustainability gong in this year’s James Dyson awards.From a record 1,800 entries – despite the challenges of Covid-19 – the award was given to 27-year-old Carvey Ehren Maigue, a student at Mapúa University in the Philippines, for his Aureus system which uses the natural scientific principles behind the northern lights. Continue reading...

Huge road, energy and mining projects driving into heart of world’s remaining forestsInfrastructure megaprojects risk pushing the world’s remaining forests past a “dangerous tipping point” and making climate targets unachievable, a report says.Tens of thousands of miles of roads and railways are planned alongside mines and dams, opening up the forests of South America, south-east Asia and central Africa to destruction, according to the report by a coalition of 25 research and conservation organisations called the New York Declaration on Forests Assessment Partners. Today, almost half of all large mines – more than 1,500 – are in forests. Continue reading...

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A vibrant, buzzy stock market for tech companies is very useful if you’re planning a green revolutionRight on cue, here comes a £4bn stock market listing of a young and exciting UK electric vehicle company – a mini Tesla, if you wish. It’s just the thing for ministers to crow about, you might think: evidence that the UK possesses a few fast-growing tech innovators capable of injecting oomph into the government’s loose 10-point sketch for a green revolution.There’s just one drawback. Arrival, with its head office in London and operations in Oxfordshire, will not be arriving on the London Stock Exchange. It is listing in New York on Nasdaq, via injection into one of those special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, that are all the rage on Wall Street this year. Continue reading...

The prime minister has correctly identified the challenge, but his record invites doubt that he can turn his rhetoric into realityBoris Johnson’s comfort zone is the future. He is weak at managing the day-to-day business of a government and bad at making hard choices quickly. For that reason, he is poorly suited to the role of prime minister during a pandemic, but better at the job of selling a “green industrial revolution” for the recovery phase.The launch on Wednesday of a 10-point plan for net zero carbon emissions allowed Mr Johnson to indulge his predilection for hyperbole. He wants Britain to be the “world’s number one centre for green technology and finance” and “the Saudi Arabia of wind”. Those are fine aspirations. Regular readers of Mr Johnson’s rhetoric know to check the small print. Continue reading...

Firm will also hire hundreds of new staff as it prepares for switch away from petrol carsHalfords is training 1,500 extra technicians to work on electric vehicles, bikes and scooters as it prepares for the switch away from petrol cars.The cycles-to-vehicle servicing group said it expected to hire hundreds of new staff and to retrain existing employees so that it would have 100 more electric car technicians next year, bringing the total to 470, and 1,400 extra electric bike and scooter technicians in addition to the 400 now in place. Continue reading...

Firm says investment in low-carbon infrastructure will help UK emerge from Covid impactSSE has set out plans to triple its renewable energy generation by 2030 as it prepares to build the world’s largest offshore windfarm off the north-east coast of England.The energy firm told investors that it was days away from a final investment decision on the 3.2GW Dogger Bank offshore windfarm, which could generate enough clean electricity to power 4.5m homes by 2026. Continue reading...

A huge amount of effort and planning will be required to fulfil Boris Johnson’s 10 pledges to tackle the climate emergency

How Boris Johnson’s proposals will affect drivers and people replacing boilersBoris Johnson’s green industrial revolution proposals have been praised by some environmental groups but critics are warning that electric vehicles are too pricey, there’s little charging infrastructure and households will receive £10,000 bills to replace gas boilers with heat pumps. As Britain transitions to a cleaner low-carbon future, what do the plans really mean for your car and home?What are the new rules for vehicles? Continue reading...

Some say proposed public funding is too little while others say key is galvanising private capitalThe government’s 10-point plan for putting the UK on track to reach net zero carbon emissions has been welcomed by experts as a good start, but many fear that the £12bn of public investment proposed will be too little to achieve the sweeping changes to the UK’s economy that will be needed.Sir David King, a former government chief scientist and chair of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University, said: “[This] is nowhere near enough either to manage the commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 or to provide a safe future. As we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on our economy, there needs to be an understanding that this is the opportunity to grow our economy in a direction that is fit for purpose in this century.” Continue reading...

Joe Biden warns on climate emergency as powerful storm inflicts catastrophic damageAt least six people have been killed and more than 60,000 evacuated after Hurricane Iota struck Nicaragua, prompting Joe Biden to say the surge in the number of powerful storms meant fighting the climate crisis was vital.Reports in the Nicaraguan press said at least three children were among the victims as the hurricane hammered the Central American country on Tuesday after making landfall the previous night. Continue reading...

While overall US coral reefs are in fair condition, along the coast of Florida as little as 2% of original coral cover remainsThe United States’ coral reefs are in fair condition, according to a recent reef condition status report, but vulnerable to decline. Scientists estimate that along the coast of Florida, where degradation is most severe, perhaps as little as 2% of original coral cover remains.The report, released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa) and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science last week, assesses reefs along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, from the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico to Guam, Hawaii and American Samoa. It is the first of its kind to do so using standardized monitoring data on a national scale. Analyzing records from 2012 to 2018, researchers identify ocean warming and acidification, coral disease and fishing as ongoing threats to coral reefs, indicating a “dire outlook” for these ecosystems. Continue reading...

Thinktank says deadline of 2026 is needed for government to meet its own carbon budgetThe prime minister’s plan to bring forward a ban on the sale of new fossil fuel vehicles by 10 years to 2030 will still not go far enough to meet the government’s own legally binding climate targets, according to new research.Boris Johnson is expected to accelerate the shift to electric vehicles by setting out a new deadline for the sales of polluting passenger cars as part of a 10-point plan to tackle the climate crisis due to be revealed this week. Continue reading...

Foxes deer and cats to be blocked from 50,000ha park in Victoria, turning it into a ‘wildlife haven’A 10km fence to keep out foxes, deers and cats will be built across the Yanakie isthmus on Victoria’s Wilsons Promontory to create a 50,000-hectare native wildlife sanctuary.The $6m fence is designed to protect vulnerable species including ground parrots, the southern brown bandicoot and long-nosed potoroo in the national park, south-east of Melbourne. Continue reading...

Australia has no national policies to expand renewable energy and per capita emissions are three times the average, global report saysAustralia is one of only two countries in the G20 not implementing or planning any sort of carbon price scheme, one of only four without a national policy to increase renewable energy and ranks last in cutting greenhouse gas emissions from transport, a new global report has found.The Climate Transparency report, an assessment by 14 organisations released before this weekend’s virtual G20 summit, said Australia ranked in the bottom bracket in every climate policy area considered except one. Continue reading...

City Corporation signs £40m deal with French renewables firm Voltalia to ensure green energy supplyThousands of solar panels in the Dorset countryside will soon help power Britain’s historic financial centre under a new renewable energy deal struck by the City of London Corporation.The City’s governing body expects to save £3m by buying more than half of the electricity powering the Corporation’s historic buildings in the Square Mile from a subsidy-free solar farm in the south-west of England made up of 95,000 new solar panels over the next 15 years. Continue reading...

Multinational plans to cash in on consumer trend towards reducing meat and dairy intakeUnilever is setting a target of €1bn (£900m) in annual sales of its plant-based foods through some of its best-known brands, as it seeks to cash in on the growing number of consumers reducing their meat and dairy intake.The estimated five-fold sales growth over the next five to seven years will be driven by new products from The Vegetarian Butcher meat-free label, and bolstered by expansion of dairy-free ice cream and mayonnaise ranges from Ben & Jerry’s, Hellmann’s, Magnum and Wall’s. Continue reading...

The dam’s benefits have been overstated and the business case does not take environmental costs into account, economist saysA 1.5 trillion-litre north Queensland dam proposal backed by both the federal and state governments could return as little as 26c for every dollar invested, an economic analysis has found.The $2.9bn Urannah dam near Mackay has been awarded coordinated project status by the Queensland government. Studies and preliminary planning work have been financed with about $15m in federal grants since 2016. Continue reading...

Temperatures nearly two degrees above average have been recorded, months before the hottest part of the seasonClimate scientists are warning New Zealand is on the brink of a marine heatwave after recording temperatures nearly two degrees above average in coastal waters off the North Island.Forecasters at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) said a marine heatwave is building, with above-average temperatures reported throughout October, following a record warm winter. Continue reading...

How can the objectives of the 10-point plan be achieved?

Labour says proposals, some of which had already been trailed, are ‘deeply disappointing’

What do governments across the world need to do to shift economies away from fossil fuels?What does a green recovery look like? That is the question governments around the world are considering as they decide how to align their $12tn worth of economic rescue packages for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic with their obligations under the Paris climate accord.The UK is expected to announce a 10-point recovery plan this week, and observers have warned that if it lacks ambition, it could undermine the world’s goals of limiting catastrophic climate breakdown. Continue reading...

Measures include a $1,000 rebate for low-income residents to replace old heaters and upgrades to 35,000 social housing propertiesVictorians have been promised Australia’s biggest household energy efficiency drive, with the Andrews government pledging $797m to programs it says will cut power bills and greenhouse gas emissions.Measures include a $1,000 rebate for low-income households to replace old heaters with modern split-systems, upgrades to 35,000 social housing properties and a new requirement that landlords keep rental properties at a minimum efficiency standard. Continue reading...

Trial to allow rented scooters on roads as part of green transport planE-scooters to rent are expected to be on the streets of London from next spring after the capital gave the go-ahead for trials. Up to three firms will be permitted to operate hire schemes, which are likely to start as small-scale operations in a limited number of boroughs.Transport for London said the trials were part of plans to encourage greener forms of transport and, in particular, to avoid a “damaging, car-led recovery from coronavirus”, with road congestion already approaching pre-crisis levels. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Researchers say Covid-19 hiatus is moment to tackle elite ‘super emitters’

Guy’s and St Thomas’ charity will fund low-traffic neighbourhood to tackle air pollution and obesity in Lambeth and Southwark

Discovery is ‘extremely concerning’ for water insects, and fish and birds that depend on themHighly toxic insecticides used on cats and dogs to kill fleas are poisoning rivers across England, a study has revealed. The discovery is “extremely concerning” for water insects, and the fish and birds that depend on them, the scientists said, who expect significant environmental damage is being done.The research found fipronil in 99% of samples from 20 rivers and the average level of one particularly toxic breakdown product of the pesticide was 38 times above the safety limit. Fipronil and another nerve agent called imidacloprid that was found in the rivers have been banned from use on farms for some years. Continue reading...

Recycling rates soar in Christchurch after council rewards the best households and confiscates bins of laggardsA recycling scheme in New Zealand modelled on rewards familiar to kindergarten children has seen tonnes of additional recycling head to the sorters every week, instead of landfill.Following the coronavirus lockdown in March and April, Christchurch city council saw recycling rates plummet, with material from only 48% of recycling trucks able to be processed in June due to frequent contamination issues, the result of poor sorting by residents. Continue reading...

Rishi Sunak looking at how to recoup lost revenues after ban on new petrol and diesel cars potentially from 2030The government is exploring options for dealing with a £40bn black hole in the public finances, which would result from a proposed ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars within a decade.Boris Johnson is expected to announce this week the cut-off date for the ban will be brought forward by five years to 2030, in a step designed to underscore the government’s commitment to a green economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading...