Environment | The Guardian

Government agrees to examine impact of shooting industry’s release of 50m non-native birdsThe annual release of more than 50 million non-native game birds into the countryside with no environmental assessment is to be reviewed by the government after campaigners announced a legal challenge.Chris Packham, Mark Avery and Ruth Tingay, of the campaign group Wild Justice, argued that the massive and unregulated increase in the number of pheasants and red-legged partridges put into the British countryside for shooting each year – up from 4 million in the early 1970s – contravened the EU habitats directive. Continue reading...

David Littleproud’s comments to parliament entirely at odds with earlier statement to Guardian AustraliaAustralia’s minister responsible for drought and natural disasters, David Littleproud, now says he accepts the science on manmade climate change, and “[I] always have”.Littleproud’s comments to the House of Representatives on Thursday were entirely at odds with a written statement he made to Guardian Australia on Tuesday. In response to questions, Littleproud said: “I don’t know if climate change is man-made.” Continue reading...

Clean Up Britain patron criticises ‘utterly useless’ ministers and ‘even more useless’ Keep Britain TidyBritain is a nation of litter louts and government efforts to tackle “the soul-destroying problem” are “utterly useless”, according to Jeremy Paxman, patron of the Clean Up Britain group.Polluters, such as the makers of chewing gum and cigarettes, should be made to pay for a national campaign to change peoples’ behaviour, he will tell the UK’s largest waste and recycling conference on Thursday. The aim is to make littering as unacceptable as drunk driving, he says. Continue reading...

Shinjiro Koizumi says: ‘We will be doomed if we allow another accident to occur’Japan’s new environment minister has called for the country’s nuclear reactors to be scrapped to prevent a repeat of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.Shinjiro Koizumi’s comments, made hours after he became Japan’s third-youngest cabinet minister since the war, could set him on a collision course with Japan’s pro-nuclear prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Continue reading...

Committee says UK should reduce use of plastics rather than replace it with other materialsCompostable and biodegradable plastics could add to marine pollution because there is no infrastructure in place to make sure they break down correctly, a committee of MPs has warned.The use of alternatives to plastic are being adopted by many food and drink companies, takeaway coffee venues, cafes and retailers. But experts giving evidence to MPs on the environment, food and rural affairs committee said the infrastructure required to deal with the new packaging was not in place and there was a lack of consumer understanding about these alternatives. Continue reading...

Indonesia environment minister says smog is also from fires in Malaysia and VietnamIndonesia has shot back at claims the country is solely responsible for the fires that have created a thick haze across parts of Malaysia this week and forced the closure of hundreds of schools.“The Indonesian government has been systematically trying to resolve this to the best of its ability. Not all smog is from Indonesia,” said Indonesia’s environment minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, in a statement on Wednesday, in a rebuke of its neighbour. Continue reading...

Calls for world-class recycling systems to replace current one, which makes just $4m a year due to contamination in co-mingled recycling binsIf Australia treated recycling waste like iron ore or coal the nation could be $300m better off each year, a report has found.Instead, Australia makes just $4m a year from recycling due to high levels of contamination in co-mingled recycling bins. Continue reading...

Finding could have implications for farming - as worms are vital part of farmland ecosystemWorms fail to thrive in earth containing microplastics, new research has shown, adding to the growing body of evidence of impacts from the increasingly widespread contaminants on the natural world.The rosy-tipped earthworm, Aporrectodea rosea, is one of the most common found in farmland in temperate regions. Scientists found that worms placed in soil loaded with high density polyethylene (HDPE) – a common plastic used for bags and bottles – for 30 days lost about 3% of their body weight, compared with a control sample of similar worms placed in similar soil without HDPE, which put on 5% in body weight over the same period. Continue reading...

Exclusive: PM has signalled Australia isn’t making any new emissions reduction targets, at least at this pointScott Morrison will not attend the UN climate action summit despite him being in America to visit the Trump administration at the time – deploying the foreign minister, Marise Payne, and the Australian ambassador for the environment, Patrick Suckling, instead.Guardian Australia understands speaking slots at the event in New York on 23 September were reserved for countries announcing new emissions reduction targets or financial commitments to the UN Green Climate Fund – and Morrison has been signalling Australia won’t be going further, at least at this point, than commitments previously announced. Continue reading...

Labor tells clean energy sector it should celebrate reaching 33,000 GWh target despite ‘full frontal assault’ by CoalitionAngus Taylor has defended the government’s record on renewable energy as Labor and the Greens ambushed the minister over a sudden drop in investment in clean energy.Labor’s climate spokesman, Mark Butler, told a Clean Energy Council gathering in Canberra the sector had withstood a “full frontal assault” from the Coalition and “some in the media”, while the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, said the current investment cliff was “no accident” but a deliberate policy of the government. Continue reading...

Azincourt | Geoffrey Boycott | Strawberries | Steam trains | Coffee ordersI think Prof Valentine Cunningham might be wrong about Agincourt being a medieval trooper’s mishearing of Azincourt (Letters, 7 September). I believe it was actually a spelling error; some medieval scribe mistook the letter Z for the letter yogh (a version of G). The opposite occurs in the name McKenzie, which is really McKengie, similar to Menzies, pronounced “Mingies”.

Ministers approve culling in 11 new areas, with 64,000 animals likely to be killed this autumnThe controversial badger cull in England has been expanded to an “unimaginable scale”, according to a leading expert who warned the government is paying far too little attention to the transmission of tuberculosis between cattle when they are traded.Ministers approved culling in 11 new areas on Wednesday, taking the total to 43. Up to 64,000 animals are likely to be killed this autumn, up from a maximum of 42,000 last year. Continue reading...

Commander says pre-emptive action may be taken against group to prevent flight delaysThe police commander in charge of policing drone protests intended to shut down Heathrow airport has said his officers will take any opportunity to pre-emptively stop activists from causing disruption to flights.Activists from Heathrow Pause, a splinter of the environmental protest group Extinction Rebellion, have vowed to shut down the London airport on Friday morning by flying small drones within the 5km exclusion zone. Continue reading...

WWF conservationists say marine wildlife sanctuaries are failing to protect the seasEurope’s marine wildlife sanctuaries are no more than “paper parks” that are failing to protect the seas, a report from conservationists has said.European seas, from the North East Atlantic ocean to the Adriatic, are in a “poor condition”, with coastal states failing to meet targets to protect marine wildlife, a report by WWF has concluded. Continue reading...

Anthony Albanese grills PM on wages growth being lower than forecast. Plus John Hewson says Liberals have ‘lost their roots’ on climate9.00am BSTWith Wednesday having delivered the visual of the deputy prime minister throwing his John Deere out of the cot, we are going to call it a night and await, feverishly, what Thursday will deliver.Will Michael McCormack remain spicy, or return to a more stale ham sandwich sort of vibe?8.51am BSTJust a quick note on the Coalition’s proposed integrity commission.The shadow attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, today criticised the government for its lack of progress on establishing a federal integrity commission, something it promised to do in late 2018. Continue reading...

Liz Truss made women and equalities minister and Zac Goldsmith handed cabinet seat

Motions going forward to this month’s party conference include a four-day week and the abolition of private schools

Exclusive: An investigation is under way after cattle were allegedly sold illegally outside supply chainThe Department of Agriculture is investigating a live export company after it received footage showing Australian cattle being pulled to the ground with ropes and slaughtered without being stunned in a carpark underneath an Indonesian mosque.International Livestock Exports has suspended all supply to one of its Indonesian abattoirs over the breach, which was reported to the department by Animals Australia. Continue reading...

Unions give backing to 20 September day of action while NGO asks head teachers to back global protestsThe Trades Union Congress (TUC) has urged members to support student climate strikers on 20 September as Amnesty International called on head teachers worldwide to back their global protests.At the their annual conference in Brighton, a proposal by the University and College Union (UCU) originally asked the TUC to call for millions of workers to stop work for half an hour, aimed at shifting government complacency over the climate crisis. Continue reading...

COP26 meeting in Glasgow in 2020 will determine future course of efforts to avert crisis

Before the meeting an official asked about the Taylor company being investigated for alleged illegal land clearingDepartment of the environment officials were acutely sensitive about meeting Angus Taylor over critically endangered grasslands while his family’s company was being investigated for alleged illegal land clearing in New South Wales, according to internal emails.The information is revealed in correspondence that had previously been partially redacted from documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws in June this year. Continue reading...

The former Liberal leader is championing crossbench bill and argues ‘it was an emergency 30 years ago’The former Liberal leader John Hewson has called on Scott Morrison to grant government MPs a conscience vote on a new parliamentary motion declaring a climate emergency.Hewson, who will join MPs on Wednesday to champion the new parliamentary motion which is being pursued by the Greens and is supported by most of the lower house crossbench, told Guardian Australia there was no controversy associated with declaring a climate emergency in 2019, “because my view is it was an emergency 30 years ago”. Continue reading...

Emissions rose 20-30% in Paris when temperatures topped 30C, raising urgent questions as the climate gets hotterEmissions from diesel cars – even newer and supposedly cleaner models – increase on hot days, a new study has found, raising questions over how cities suffering from air pollution can deal with urban heat islands and the climate crisis.Research in Paris by The Real Urban Emissions (True) initiative found that diesel car emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) rose by 20% to 30% when temperatures topped 30C – a common event this summer. Continue reading...

Report predicts radical scheme could cut air pollution by a quarter as other cities including Seattle prepare to follow suitBarcelona could save hundreds of lives and cut air pollution by a quarter if it fully implements its radical superblocks scheme to reduce traffic, a new report claims.A study carried out by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health calculates that the city could prevent 667 premature deaths every year if it created all 503 superblocks envisaged in its initial plan – up from the current six schemes. Continue reading...

Environmental activists demonstrate outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road siteExtinction Rebellion has blocked the entrance to the UK’s only active fracking site in a demonstration against what it called the “burgeoning catastrophe” of global warming.Protesters from the environmental group gathered outside the shale gas site on Preston New Road, near Blackpool, on Tuesday morning alongside a yellow boat bearing the words: “Planet before profit”. Continue reading...

Letetia Anne Ware imported garlic bulbs that were potential carriers of devastating plant pathogenA Tasmanian farmer has been given an 11-month jail sentence for illegally importing garlic bulbs that could have put Australia’s agricultural sector at risk.The farmer and former chair of the Australian Garlic Industry Association Letetia Anne Ware, 53, imported almost 2,200 garlic bulbs from the US and Canada. Continue reading...

More than a million tonnes of contaminated water lies in storage but power company says it will run out of space by 2022The operator of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will have to dump huge quantities of contaminated water from the site directly into the Pacific Ocean, Japan’s environment minister has said – a move that would enrage local fishermen.More than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water has accumulated at the plant since it was struck by a tsunami in March 2011, triggering a triple meltdown that forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents. Continue reading...

Study finds breakdown in annual spawning synchrony in Red Sea, threatening some species with extinctionIt has been described by scientists as “the greatest orgy in the world”; an annual gamete-fest, where entire colonies of coral reefs release their sperm and eggs simultaneously in a slick on the ocean surface that has been seen from space. But now scientists fear the climate crisis may be disrupting the ability of corals to synchronise this marine phenomenon, threatening them with extinction.A Tel Aviv university study, published in Science, has found the release of eggs and sperm in certain reef-building corals in the Gulf of Eilat in the Red Sea have changed over time and have lost their synchronicity. For a coral, reliant on a chance encounter, timing is everything. But researchers have found some are spawning “out of tune” with normal patterns, with the result that fewer baby corals are forming. Continue reading...

Minister tells Guardian he is unsure of causes of crisis, saying he wants farmers to have tools to adapt to changeAustralia’s minister responsible for drought and natural disasters, David Littleproud, has said that he doesn’t “know if climate change is manmade”.Clarifying earlier comments that the question is “irrelevant” when considering the Coalition government’s response to intensifying bushfires, he told Guardian Australia he was unsure about the causes of the climate crisis but wanted to give the country the tools to adapt. Continue reading...

NFU says growing fuel for power stations and capturing CO can slash emissions

Trillions of dollars needed to avoid ‘climate apartheid’ but this is less than cost of inactionThe world’s readiness for the inevitable effects of the climate crisis is “gravely insufficient”, according to a report from global leaders.This lack of preparedness will result in poverty, water shortages and levels of migration soaring, with an “irrefutable toll on human life”, the report warns. Continue reading...

Operators ask government for national strategy to encourage more people to use busesBus operators have pledged to buy only ultra-low or zero-emission vehicles from 2025 as they called on the government to outline a national strategy to encourage more people to use buses.The Confederation of Passenger Transport, which represents most bus operators in the UK including the big five firms – Arriva, FirstGroup, Go Ahead, National Express and Stagecoach – said it wanted lower fares for jobseekers and apprentices, smart ticketing and innovative, sustainable solutions for rural areas, where bus services have been hit particularly hard. Continue reading...

Two trees infected with subspecies of Xylella fastidiosa that killed 1m trees in ItalyA deadly disease estimated to have killed a million olive trees in Italy has spread to France.The French agriculture ministry announced the discovery of the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, known as olive tree leprosy, on two trees in the south of the country and said the infected trees would be destroyed to stop it spreading. Continue reading...

A 2,000km road and river odyssey in Brazil reveals consensus from all sides: Bolsonaro has ushered in a new age of wreckingFrom afar, it resembles a tornado: an immense grey column shooting thousands of feet upwards from the forest canopy into the Amazonian skies.Up close it is an inferno: a raging conflagration obliterating yet another stretch of the world’s greatest rainforest as a herd of Nelore cattle looks on in bewilderment. Continue reading...

There are doubts the Noah’s Ark plan for the Lower Darling will be enough to prevent more mass fish killsFaced with a looming ferocious summer with little rain forecast, the New South Wales government has embarked on a Noah’s Ark type operation to move native fish from the Lower Darling – part of Australia’s most significant river system – to safe havens before high temperatures return to the already stressed river basin.Researchers have warned of other alarming ecological signs that the Lower Darling River – part of the giant Murray-Darling Basin – is in a dire state, following last summer’s mass fish kills. Continue reading...

Fires that swept though subtropical rainforest around the historic Binna Burra lodge are unprecedented, experts sayQueensland’s former fire commissioner says an erratic bushfire front that climbed into the state’s subtropical rainforest and razed the 86-year-old Binna Burra Lodge is “like nothing we’ve ever seen before”.“What we’re seeing, it’s just not within people’s imagination,” said Lee Johnson, who spent 12 years in charge of Queensland’s fire service. Continue reading...

Australian researchers are trying to understand how the birds, which receive no parental care, survive against all odds in big citiesThe chicks are considered “hors d’oeuvres” of the bird world and now Sydney scientists need public help trying to understand how brush turkeys survive against the odds in urban environments.Brush turkeys’ six-month breeding season kicked off in July and a team of researchers from the University of Sydney and Taronga Zoo have put out a call for community sightings of nesting mounds, breeding activities and chick hatchings across New South Wales and Queensland. Continue reading...

Humber drive aims to shrink carbon footprint of UK’s most polluting industrial zoneEnergy companies have ignited multibillion-pound plans for the UK’s first carbon-neutral “industrial cluster” in the Humber.An alliance of companies including National Grid, Drax and Norway’s state energy company, Equinor, are leading a campaign to shrink the carbon footprint of Britain’s most polluting industrial zone. Continue reading...

More than 90% of the land cleared was not referred to the federal government for assessmentMore than 7.7m hectares of habitat have been cleared since the introduction of Australia’s national environment act, according to new research that finds 93% of land cleared was not referred to the federal government for assessment.The study, led by researchers from the University of Queensland and three environment organisations – the Australian Conservation Foundation, WWF Australia and the Wilderness Society – warns that Australia’s high extinction rate will increase “without a fundamental change” in how environment laws are enforced. Continue reading...

Gilets jaunes-style movement has threatened to bring down national government

Phenomenon could be as damaging as ‘the blob’ that caused algae blooms and killed sea lions several years agoThe ocean off the western coast of North America is five degrees Fahrenheit hotter than usual after warming at an unusually rapid rate, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).It has been dubbed the “north-east Pacific marine heatwave of 2019”. Continue reading...

Mock funeral procession highlights impact of cars and demands funding for cyclist safetyHundreds of cyclists took part in a staged funeral procession in central London on Saturday before performing a “die-in” near Whitehall to call for greater investment in walking and cycling.The protest, organised by the campaign groups Extinction Rebellion and Stop Killing Cyclists, drew attention to statistics showing that more than 100 cyclists were killed and 3,400 seriously injured in 2016, the most recent year for which figures were available. Continue reading...

Land once owned by Beatrix Potter is being ruined by off-road vehicles, campaigners claim. Now a crucial decision looms on whether to ban themRichard Bowness’s heart beats through this landscape. His grandfather broke stones to construct many of the farm tracks, and with his “own bare hands” Bowness built many of the local cottages.As we wind down one corner through the valleys just north of Coniston Water, he points to the upstairs window of a cottage: “I was conceived there, you know!” Continue reading...

Males have begun their walkabout seeking a mate (and hoping not to get eaten) – and this year has seen a big turnoutGaggles of tarantulas are emerging from their burrows across the western US on a quest to mate, hunting for love in prairies, foothills and a garage belonging to Kim Kardashian West.From August to October, the eight-legged crawlers go on a walkabout for a once-in-a-lifetime foray to find a partner. The phenomenon is now occurring on a unusually large scale from northern California to Colorado and Texas, shining a light on the arachnids’ remarkable mating behavior, which can involve dancing and cannibalism. Continue reading...

Lashing rain, 185mph winds – the ferocious storm has left 43 dead and hundreds missing. Oliver Laughland reports from the rubble of Grand BahamaAs Erica Roberts clung to a tall mango tree, the winds and sea water churned up by Hurricane Dorian pounding her face, a single thought ran through her head: “I will not die like this.”Related: 'I thought no one was coming to rescue us': Abaco Islanders flee Dorian's destruction Continue reading...

Dr Peter Hounsell writes that the electric bin lorries currently being trialled are nothing new, while Richard Ellam says that it used to be common for councils to burn rubbish to generate electricityYour report on electric bin lorries powered by energy from household waste (5 September) that are being trialled by Sheffield and Westminster councils suggests that this may be a world first for local authorities.This may well be the case in the 21st century, but Sheffield also claimed to be the first to do this back in 1915. Electric refuse collection vehicles were not uncommon in the early decades of the 20th century, and one manufacturer claimed to have 50 local authority customers for its vehicles. Continue reading...

Residents inhaling smoke from peat and trees burned hundreds of miles awayAn increase in Indonesian forest fires – the sharpest rise since 2015 – has infuriated neighbouring Malaysia, where residents are inhaling smoke from peat and trees burned hundreds of miles away.More than 14 megatonnes of carbon dioxide were discharged from the blazes on 5 September, more than triple the average on this day over the previous 15 years, according to satellite data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. Continue reading...