Stark warning comes as UK commits to net zero emissions target for 2050France is falling behind on tackling the climate emergency despite ambitious promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a new report has found, saying Paris is worryingly far from delivering its goals.The stark warning from France’s independent advisory council on climate comes at a key moment, as the eurozone’s second-biggest economy attempts to present itself as a world leader on the climate emergency. Continue reading...

Biffa Waste Services found guilty of exporting unsorted waste to China it said was paperOne of the UK’s biggest waste firms has been convicted of sending used nappies and other contaminated materials to China illegally.Biffa Waste Services Ltd was found guilty of exporting unsorted household waste that it said was paper. The company was prosecuted by the Environment Agency after investigators stopped seven 25-tonne containers from leaving Felixstowe in Suffolk over suspicions about the content. Continue reading...

Company must pay back £123m to customers over ‘shocking’ failures at sewage treatment sitesSouthern Water faces prosecution by the Environment Agency after being handed a record £126m penalty by the water regulator over “shocking” failures at its sewage treatment sites that polluted rivers and beaches in southern England.The package imposed by the regulator, Ofwat, includes compensation of £123m to customers over five years and a £3m fine. The company’s 4.2 million customers will each receive £61 off their bills – £17 in 2020-21 and £11 in each of the following four years. Continue reading...

Angie Zelter, 68, wanted judge to take ‘urgency of the climate emergency’ into accountThe first person to face trial over the Extinction Rebellion protests in April has been found guilty of a minor public order offence for blocking a road in central London.Angie Zelter, 68, was given a conditional discharge at Hendon magistrates court on Tuesday after being arrested for lying in the road near Parliament Square on 17 April. She had been taking part in protests in which thousands of people blocked key sites across the capital over 10 days to highlight the escalating climate emergency. Continue reading...

Secret filming at three Moy Park farms in Lincolnshire shows birds that are lame, struggling to breathe and surrounded by carcassesOne of the UK’s biggest chicken producers has been keeping chickens in cramped conditions on three farms in Lincolnshire, including in enormous “double-decker” multi-storey buildings, where secretly filmed footage shows chickens that are lame, struggling to breathe and surrounded by dead birds.From across their sites in Northern Ireland and England, Moy Park supplies 30% of the British poultry market, including Tesco, Ocado and Sainsbury’s. The supermarkets have told the Guardian they they are now investigating their supply chains after the footage was sent to them. Continue reading...

Ex-US vice-president says only big solutions can offset impact of systemic shifts and avert disasterAl Gore has said the global economy requires a fundamental upgrade to become more sustainable in order for the world to survive an environmental crisis and widening social divides.The environmentalist and former US vice-president said the world was in the early stages of a “sustainability revolution” that had “the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution and the speed of the digital revolution”. Continue reading...

Right to life is likely to be undermined alongside the rule of law, special rapporteur saysThe world is increasingly at risk of “climate apartheid”, where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said.Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law. Continue reading...

Exposure to potentially toxic substances that are part of modern life only adds to the many anxieties of parenting. Here’s what action you can takeFrom strapping zip ties on to cabinets to popping plastic covers into outlets, new parents do what they can to control their newborn’s environment. But beyond the visible, there are more obscure health concerns from additives and contaminants found in unexpected places.Exposure to our environment begins even before birth. Studies have shown that some chemicals, like PFAS and flame retardants, in everyday products can pass from mother to fetus through the umbilical cord, and after birth through breast milk. Socioeconomic status and race also affect lifetime exposure. Minority and low-income individuals are disproportionately affected by pollution and toxic chemicals. Continue reading...

Pop-up store will also sell water in recyclable aluminium cans and refillable bottles at festivalSandwiches in 100% compostable packaging will go on sale at Glastonbury festival which starts on Wednesday, as part of a trial launched by the Co-op.In what it claims is a first for a national food retailer, the convenience chain says all elements of the packaging – from the base card to the transparent film and the label – are compostable. Continue reading...

Open letter calls on the prime minister to block all new coal and gas projects, including AdaniMore than 150 religious leaders have called on Scott Morrison to acknowledge the world faces a climate emergency and block all new coal and gas projects, including Adani’s Carmichael mine.In an open letter headed “no faith in coal”, the leaders say the climate crisis is a profoundly moral problem and Australia’s response will be crucial in addressing it. Continue reading...

Major economies pledged a decade ago to phase out all aid for fossil fuelsG20 countries have almost tripled the subsidies they give to coal-fired power plants in recent years, despite the urgent need to cut the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis.The bloc of major economies pledged a decade ago to phase out all fossil fuel subsidies. Continue reading...

Treasury proposes rise from 5% to 20%, while the tax on coal will stay at lower rateHomes hoping to shrink their carbon footprints by installing a solar-battery system face a steep VAT increase from October under new laws proposed by HMRC.The Treasury put forward legislation on Monday to raise VAT for home solar-battery systems from 5% to 20%, on the same day that MPs are debating the government’s new net zero carbon target for 2050. Continue reading...

John McDonnell says Bank would monitor City firms’ progress on carbon emissions

Greater Manchester’s Bee Network has just £160m of the cash it needs, unlike a junction near BedfordAlmost exactly a year ago, Chris Boardman – the Olympic champion turned walking and cycling commissioner – unveiled a bold vision: Greater Manchester was to turn itself into a Dutch-style cycling paradise by building a 1,000-mile network of walking and biking routes called Beelines, after Manchester’s civic symbol, the worker bee.A year on, the scheme has changed its name to the Bee Network after a rather embarrassing copyright infringement, and has expanded to cover 1,800 miles. Yet so far, work has only begun on one tiny section – a bit of towpath in Wigan known as the “muddy mile” – and the first wodge of money has already gone. Continue reading...

Maarten van der Weijden tackles daunting course not used for skating in 22 yearsAs Europe braces for a heatwave this week, a Dutchman is swimming the route of the country’s most famed ice skating race, which has not been held for two decades as the climate crisis bites.Instead of skating the 121 miles (195km) of the daunting Elfstedentocht (11 cities race), the Olympic gold marathon swimmer Maarten van der Weijden is ploughing his way through its canals. Continue reading...

Chain will charge 5p, 7p or 10p for various sizes of paper bag, with profits going to charityBoots will phase out all plastic bags from its stores by 2020, replacing them with brown paper bags.The health and beauty chain will remove 40m plastic bags a year from use, amounting to more than 900 tonnes of single-use plastic. Continue reading...

Conservationists urge Sussan Ley to get her priorities right, saying her job is to protect species, not industriesVictoria’s faunal emblem, the tiny Leadbeater’s possum, will keep its critically endangered listing after the environment minister, Sussan Ley, rejected a push by Coalition MPs and the forestry industry to downgrade its conservation status.But Ley has been criticised for suggesting a long-delayed recovery plan for the possum should also consider the needs of the timber industry. Continue reading...

Until recently we didn’t know how much plastic was piling up around us. When we found out, the picture wasn’t pretty

Rangers and scientists and a white cartoonist converge for the night parrot but where is the night parrot???

Workers have been fighting uranium mining for decades – the environment needs mass civil disobedienceWhat do Clive Palmer, Tony Abbott, Cory Bernardi, Barnaby Joyce, Mark Latham, Jim Molan, Craig Kelly, Eric Abetz and David Leyonhjelm have in common?No doubt many answers will come to to mind. But whatever else unites them, they all support nuclear power. Continue reading...

Event organisers have already gone to war on plastic bottles and diesel generators, with the full support of music fansWhen Chris Johnson first started putting on outdoor parties with his mates, they were small, impromptu and shambolic – or “really good fun”, as he puts it. Seventeen years later and he and the same four university friends are still pioneering in their field of partying, albeit Shambala is now a four-day festival in rural Northamptonshire with 15,000 people that has set an industry standard for its eco-credentials.“We’re a purpose-led organisation, the point of it existing is to contribute something to the world,” says Johnson, “and the environment is an important part of our outlook; we have a responsibility – but also an opportunity to experiment.” Continue reading...

Cold, rainy weather has meant severe planting delays for farmers from Ohio to Nebraska – and next week’s acreage report takes on heightened importanceIn his 32 years of farming, Steve Fourez says he’s almost never been so late planting corn and soybean crops on the 500 acres he farms in east-central Illinois.Normally by the start of May he’s finished planting corn, and soybeans are seeded soon after. This year, Fourez said, he wrapped up planting on 6 June, as cold, grey and rainy weather kept him idle. Fourez’s experience is playing out across the corn belt, a deeply fertile agricultural region stretching roughly from Ohio to Nebraska. Continue reading...

The government stands accused of failing to protect workers as it sold off projects to EDF and other foreign firmsIn the renewables sector, the Scottish government has been perfecting a form of political alchemy over the last decade. In this, Nicola Sturgeon and her ministers have succeeded in spinning mere optimism into hard political currency.The title of its manifesto for the 2011 Holyrood election asked voters to “Re-elect a Scottish Government Working For Scotland” and claimed that developing the low-carbon economy would create “around 130,000 jobs”. At the current growth rate of real jobs in this sector, you wouldn’t bet on that figure of 130,000 being reached before that big asteroid with Earth’s name on it finds its bearings. Continue reading...

Floating boom is designed to trap 1.8tn items of plastic without harming marine life – but broke apart last time

Activists consider legal challenge, saying rules related to source aquifer have been compromisedThe Queensland environment department may have acted “unlawfully” when it approved of Adani’s groundwater plan, in the process backing down on a longstanding requirement that the miner provide definitive proof about the source of an ancient desert spring.Environmental groups are now considering a legal challenge to the approval, partly because the state’s Department of Environment and Science (DES) appeared to negotiate a last-minute compromise with Adani rather than applying strict conditions. Continue reading...

Nation suffering disproportionately from climate emergency to phase in ban, believed to be world first, by DecemberIt is but a tiny speck in the Pacific Ocean, but the island state of Vanuatu is leading the global fight against plastic waste. The nation, which has already introduced one of the toughest single-use plastic bans in the world, is believed to be the first to propose a ban on disposable nappies, to be phased in at the end of this year.At a meeting in London this week, chaired by Patricia Scotland, the secretary general of the Commonwealth, Vanuatu was hailed as a “champion” nation, one of 12 who are forging ahead in tackling ocean and climate emergency challenges. Continue reading...

Scores of wildfires mean 2019 has already broken the record set during last year’s heatwavePlant aspen trees, avoid eucalyptus, and have a word with your lazy neighbour if you want to protect your property against wildfires, gardeners have been warned, as the UK faces an increasing risk of blazes from global heating.This year has already been the worst for wildfires in the country in the last decade, perhaps longer, and comes on top of a significant rise in the number and extent of fires during last summer’s record-breaking drought and heatwave. Continue reading...

Five Democrats say Trump officials have failed to ensure chemicals used in everyday products and materials are safe for humansSenate Democrats are charging that the Trump administration has gone “dangerously off the rails”, in failing to implement landmark legislation meant to protect people from toxic chemicals. Continue reading...

Janet Barker recounts assault by suspended MP and says it will not stop her activism

Police investigate reports of assault as video shows Field forcefully removing womanMark Field has been suspended as a Foreign Office minister after a video showed him pushing a female Greenpeace activist against a pillar and grabbing her neck while she protested at the chancellor’s Mansion House speech.Police are investigating third-party reports of assault made against Field, who has since apologised to the protester. The MP for the Cities of London and Westminster said he had felt threatened when the protester walked past him and was worried she might have been armed. Continue reading...

I’m leaving the RSC because of its sponsorship deal with the fossil-fuel giant. What would Shakespeare have made of this?

Actor says Royal Shakespeare Company deal helps oil firm ‘obscure reality of its activities’

This week: hungry oriole chicks, an elderly sloth, a soggy robin and a stuck squirrel Continue reading...

One in three young women in Britain consider a garment worn once or twice to be oldFast fashion – the rapid system of trend-driven, low-cost clothing manufacture beloved by UK consumers – is on the rampage. We crossed a worrying line in 2014, scaling up garment production to 100bn pieces of new clothing a year. These are clothes, made from virgin resources, increasingly plastic, pushed out into the world with little thought as to where they will end up. Without rapid reform, the fashion industry – of which fast fashion is the dominant player – could be responsible for a quarter of the Earth’s carbon budget by 2050. This threat to the planet has, not surprisingly, attracted the attention of climate protesters. Extinction Rebellion picketed London fashion week for the first time in February.The UK’s contribution is enormous. Not only did we invent fast fashion, but our fashion consumers are among the most voracious in the world. One in three young women, the biggest segment of consumers, consider garments worn once or twice to be old. UK consumers sent 300,000 tonnes of textiles to be burned or dumped in landfill in 2018. Continue reading...

Government agency has failed to work with traditional owners to look after parks such as Uluru-Kata Tjuta and KakaduAustralia’s six commonwealth national parks – including Kakadu and Uluru – are not being effectively managed by the government corporation tasked with preserving them, an audit has found.In a report released on Friday, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) said the director of national parks had failed to meet benchmarks set by auditors to probe the agency’s management of some of the nation’s most precious land. Continue reading...

Video shows Foreign Office minister manhandling female demonstrator

The little green invader gobbling shellfish and destroying habitats in the Gulf of Maine could finally have a predator – humansIn the salt marshes and estuaries of New England, the most dominant and fearsome predator is a voracious invader that grows to just inches and lays waste to everything in its path.The European green crab first arrived in the new world more than 200 years go, smuggling itself to American shores in the ballast holds of transatlantic ships. Continue reading...

The physicist, 79, has a seat on the National Security Council – and thinks the science that proves global heating is wrongBy the early 1990s, the man now dubbed the “chief climate change skeptic” in Donald Trump’s White House had already decided he was uneasy with the science that showed humans were heating the planet.Related: Seawalls to protect US against rising oceans could cost $416bn by 2040 Continue reading...

Survey says teachers feel ill-equipped to educate pupils, as school strikes continueA growing number of teachers want their pupils to learn more about the climate crisis and are calling for environmental training so they can prepare children for a rapidly changing world, according to a poll.The findings from YouGov research commissioned by Oxfam come before the latest round of school climate strikes on Friday, in which it is expected that hundreds of thousands of young people will walk out of classrooms around the world. Continue reading...

Once we lived without it, now we can’t escape it. A historian unpacks the origins of our plastic addictionIn 1957 Disneyland opened the Monsanto House of the Future, an all-plastic dwelling. Over the next 10 years millions of visitors passed through its fantastical rooms, designed by MIT architects with curved walls and large windows. The house was equipped with plastic chairs and plastic floors, the kitchen with precise stacks of plastic plates and plastic cups. Monsanto’s house trumpeted the wonders of science, as well as the chemical industry and its products. Plastic, it proclaimed, was the material of tomorrow.Related: Plastic wrapped in plastic: the wasteful reality of America's grocery stores Continue reading...

Legal and General Investment Management cuts companies including ExxonMobilAn ethical investment operation by the UK’s largest asset manager has dumped shares in a string of US companies it has deemed climate crisis laggards, including oil giant ExxonMobil and insurer Metlife.Legal and General Investment Management (LGIM) said it had cut five companies – ExxonMobil, Metlife, Spam maker Hormel Foods, US retailer Kroger and Korean Electric Power Corporation – from its umbrella of ethical investment funds worth a total of £5bn. Continue reading...

National Grid is able to confidently predict the 2019 record just six months into the yearZero-carbon energy sources are poised to overtake fossil fuels as the UK’s largest electricity source over a full calendar year.This year will be the first that fossil fuels make up less than half of the electricity generated, according to National Grid, following a dramatic decline in coal-fired power and rising renewable energy. Continue reading...

Concern grow over ammonia particles from fertiliser and bioaerosol from intensive farmsWe think of the countryside as being a place of fresh air. Each weekend thousands of us leave our cities to hike or cycle in rural areas or simply to enjoy time in nature. Increasing attention is being given, however, to air pollution from farming. Ammonia from fertiliser and slurry mixes with air pollution from cities, traffic and industry to add to the particle pollution that plagues many parts of the world. It is estimated that halving ammonia from farming could avoid about 52,000 premature deaths from air pollution across Europe each year and 3,000 in the UK.Increasing attention is also being paid to bioaerosol from intensive farming. In animal houses these are tiny particles and dust from the animals themselves, their food, bedding and waste. They can also include fungi, bacteria and pollen. A recent review by Imperial College and Public Health England found evidence of respiratory problems in farm workers and raised concerns about exposure for people living close to intensive livestock farms, including some evidence of increased asthma in children. Bioaerosol concerns mean that composting facilities need to be at least 250 metres from UK homes and schools, but farms can be nearer and only require assessment if they are closer than 100 metres. Continue reading...

MPs launch assembly plan but environmental activists say its conclusions must be bindingA citizens’ assembly on the climate emergency will take place this autumn to explore the fastest and fairest ways to end the UK’s carbon emissions.Six House of Commons select committees announced the assembly on Thursday. It is the second of the three demands made by the Extinction Rebellion protest group to be addressed. Continue reading...

Mass migration back to UK waylaid by stormy conditions and lack of nesting placesThe number of swifts that returned to Britain from their wintering grounds in Africa this spring was the lowest since records began, with poor weather in the Mediterranean delaying their arrival by two weeks. Experts fear the recent wet weather will further hit their numbers. Swift numbers in Britain have fallen by more than 50% since 1995.More than 100 walks, talks and visits to urban areas to witness the swift’s aerial “screaming parties” will be held this week to raise awareness of the plight of this unique migratory bird. Continue reading...

Thursday’s top story: US-Iranian tensions escalate amid dispute over an American drone. Plus, Joe Biden criticised for working with segregationist senatorsSubscribe now to receive the morning briefing by email.Good morning, I’m Mattha Busby with today’s essential stories. Continue reading...