Environment | The Guardian

Create NSW contacted Screenworks, which then demanded the film-makers take down Island HomeA New South Wales government agency has demanded the removal from the internet of a hard-hitting environmental short film which urges Australians to “vote for the climate”.Island Home features stirring imagery of Australia’s coastline, warning it will be harmed by the climate emergency, and criticises Adani for the Carmichael coalmine and Equinor’s proposal to drill the Great Australian Bight. Continue reading...

Operators of historic vessels could be sunk by requirements costing up to £250,000 per boatOnce, thousands of sailing barges plied the Thames estuary. Today, the sight of Will, the largest such vessel still travelling on the waters in London – now converted for pleasure cruises – turns heads.Passengers on the deck of a giant cruise ship sailing up to Tower Bridge peer and wave at the historic barge below. But Will’s co-owner, Mark Tower, 60, warns that such sights – “absolutely part of the Thames maritime heritage” – could soon be lost. Continue reading...

Governments of the world need to act. It’s time to speak to our planet with kindness before it’s too lateAll the raspy-voice myna birds have come here, to this old swamp, where the ghost swans now dance the yellow dust song cycles of drought. Around and around the dry swamp they go with their webbed feet stomping up the earth in a cloud of dust, and all the bits and pieces of the past unravelled from parched soil. The Swan Book, by Alexis Wright.A dense haze of smoke crawled over Melbourne and embraced us for a day in its lonely pilgrimage, inviting us to contemplate its mourning rite, its long prayer. Continue reading...

Campaigners say pharmacy chain should uphold promise to reduce plastic packagingThe pharmacy chain Boots has come under fire for using plastic bags, rather than paper ones, to package some of its prescriptions.Environmental campaigners and customers criticised the firm, which signed up to a high-profile scheme to cut plastic packaging last year. Continue reading...

A bobcat, a Burmese python and a baby elephant Continue reading...

As the clock struck 12, the Meadowlands Marsh Hawks set out into the New Jersey night. But could they tally enough birds to beat their rivals?A white SUV ground to a stop near a sliver of New Jersey marshland, tires snarling against the gravel and sand access road. Three men – Christopher Takacs, David Bernstein, and Michael Wolfe – bounded out. Brine lingered in the moist air as they rushed forward on foot, traveling below an overpass. Reeds lined the lane, which was somewhere along the Hackensack River. Midges and ticks lurked in the dark as the trio waited for midnight. Takacs’ phone alarm chirped. It was finally midnight. As if on cue, something trilled in the near distance.“There’s a shorebird calling!” one of the men said. Continue reading...

From walking more to reducing waste, here’s what you can do to make a difference

Exclusive: Energy minister went to university with the fund manager who was chief investment officer in Pacific Alliance GroupOne of the main beneficiaries of an $80m sale of water to the federal government was a Hong Kong-based investment fund whose founder and chief investment officer attended New College, Oxford, alongside Angus Taylor.In 2017, the government paid Eastern Australia Agriculture $80m for its entitlements to overland flows on two properties in Queensland. Continue reading...

Taiji resident will testify in attempt to ban activity as part of charity’s legal challengeA man from Taiji, the Japanese fishing town whose annual slaughter of dolphins has drawn widespread condemnation, will appear in court on Friday in an unprecedented legal challenge to the hunts.In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the plaintiff, who has asked not to be named until the hearing has concluded, said he had been been ostracised in Taiji, where he was born and raised but decided to speak out against the hunts. Continue reading...

With sitting Liberal MPs along coast under pressure from angry electorate, Coalition promises audit of regulator’s decisionA last-ditch effort to win votes in key seats in South Australia and Victoria has prompted both major parties to make changes to their policies on oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight.The resources minister Matt Canavan – who has previously said offshore oil exploration should be a national priority – said on Thursday a re-elected Coalition government would commission an independent audit of the oil regulator’s consideration of exploration in the Bight. Continue reading...

Taking back control from private shareholders will cost a Labour government billionsThe Labour Party has announced plans to take back control of Britain’s energy network from private shareholders, as part of a sweeping nationalisation policy. We look at how a Labour government plans to pay for the multibillion pound programme.Related: Nationalisation plans will bring more than howls of outrage | Nils Pratley Continue reading...

Debris on Cocos (Keeling) Islands was mostly bottles, cutlery, bags and straws, but also included 977,000 shoes, study saysOn the beaches of the tiny Cocos (Keeling) Islands, population 600, marine scientists found 977,000 shoes and 373,000 toothbrushes.Related: ‘Monstrous’: Indigenous rangers’ struggle against the plastic ruining Arnhem Land beaches Continue reading...

National Grid chief says Labour policy will also stall move to cleaner energy as firm unveils £1.8bn profitThe chief executive of National Grid has warned that Labour’s renationalisation proposals would hold back the UK’s move to cleaner energy and mean higher prices for customers, as the company reported an £1.8bn annual profit.National Grid, which runs the UK’s national electricity network, said its profit for the 12 months to 31 March was down by nearly a third from £2.7bn the year before. It wrote off £137m of costs spent to connect two nuclear UK projects in Cumbria and Wales that were cancelled, and also took a financial hit from a seven-month labour dispute at its US business. Continue reading...

Mayor hails ‘significant impact’ in first month of capital’s ultra-low emission zoneThe number of the worst polluting cars and vans driving into central London dropped sharply in the first month of the ultra-low emissions zone.Initial figures show that on average 9,400 fewer such vehicles entered central London each day in April compared with March. There were 36,000 fewer than in February 2017 when the ultra-low emission zone plans were announced, though much of that drop could be attributed to drivers switching to cleaner vehicles. Continue reading...

Media criticism has actually kickstarted my drive to get commuters on to two wheelsOver the last few weeks, our schoolchildren have staged climate change strikes, while Extinction Rebellion locked down central London. Nearby, MPs (including myself) listened to Greta Thunberg and held debates on climate change.So, at a time when most of the country is focused on the threats to our environment, the challenges we face in addressing them and the need for not just behavioural change but a transformation of our economy, what is more newsworthy to Fleet Street? Continue reading...

Effort to build offshore wind turbines to power up to 6m homes will create more than 10,000 jobs under Climate Jobs New York planAs global warming has worsened in recent years, environmentalists and union members have often protested against each other, whether over fracking, oil pipelines, coal production or the Green New Deal.But an innovative new labor-environmentalist effort in New York – to build offshore wind turbines to power up to 6m homes – is a sharp departure from all that feuding and shows that these two groups can work together to advance renewable energy and reduce dependence on carbon-based energy. Continue reading...

After filming himself as he clambered out with a pickax, John All has resumed his Himalayan missionOne spring morning in 2014, before breakfast or even coffee, John All, 49, a Mount Everest climber and then a professor at Western Kentucky University, was walking near his tent on a remote Himalayan peak in Nepal called Himlung when he broke through a thin layer of snow and clattered 70ft down a crevasse. He would have kept falling, almost certainly to his death, were it not for a small ice shelf spanning the fissure, upon which he miraculously, if painfully, landed.Stunned and injured – it turned out he’d broken 15 bones, dislocated his shoulder, and was bleeding internally – All gathered himself in the icy crypt and then, like any good scientist, began to document the ordeal. He thought of his teammates on the mountain, his students back at school, his mother at home in Georgia. They would want to know what had happened to him should he not make it, which seemed likely. Continue reading...

Male-dominated boards due to lack of flexible working and unconscious bias, report findsLeading UK energy companies are failing to promote women into senior roles, figures show.Just 6% of executive board seats are filled by women, and 42% of major energy firms have no women on their boards at all. Continue reading...

Australian researchers say governments must step up and protect critical habitats to give wildlife a chanceMore than 20 native animals would disappear from the Great Dividing Range before the end of the century if global emissions continue at business as usual rates, according to new analysis by Australian researchers.The University of Queensland and Australian Conservation Foundation study, published this week in Global Ecology and Conservation, examines native fauna in a part of the country that is home to three-quarters of the population and much of Australia’s biodiversity. Continue reading...

Jeremy Corbyn and Rebecca Long-Bailey will say heat and electricity are a human rightLabour will announce plans on Thursday to seize back control of Britain’s energy network from private shareholders in an effort to fight climate change and end fuel poverty.Jeremy Corbyn and the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, are expected to say that heat and electricity should be a human right for all and nationalisation of the network is key to decarbonising the economy. Continue reading...

Jeremy Corbyn to make pledge as part of party’s ‘green industrial revolution’Labour have announced plans to fit solar panels to 1.75m homes lived in by socially housed or low-income households as part of its promised “green industrial revolution” to try to combat climate change and boost jobs.The programme is due to be announced by Jeremy Corbyn and the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, at an event in Yorkshire on Thursday. Continue reading...

Last week the Mauna Loa Observatory observed the highest levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ever documentedDonald Trump’s interior secretary hasn’t “lost sleep over”, the record-breaking levels of pollution heating the planet, he told US lawmakers in an oversight hearing.The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii observed carbon dioxide levels of 415 parts per million in the atmosphere on Friday – the highest ever documented. Continue reading...

Richard Di Natale says plan would be one of the first things Greens would bring up with Shorten government on climate changeThe Greens would demand $1bn to help workers and communities transition away from coalmining, export and power production, making a shift to renewable energy jobs central to climate negotiations with Labor.The Greens’ “Just Transition” policy mirrors Labor’s in its call for a new federal authority to manage the decline of coal jobs, but the Greens will pair a more ambitious timeline to phase out coal with demands to do more to move workers into renewable energy industries. Continue reading...

Deb Haaland, one of the first Native American women elected to Congress, has become a powerful voice for US public landsWhile she was campaigning for a seat in the US Congress last year, Deb Haaland went camping for four days. It was less a surprisingly timed vacation and more a return home.Her destination was notable: Utah’s Bears Ears national monument, which Donald Trump controversially downsized in 2017 as part of a bid to encourage resource extraction. She wanted to experience “a living landscape” where the art and artifacts of her people, the indigenous Pueblo, are still abundant. She spent the trip hiking in and out of steep canyons and marveled at the area’s famed Moon House, a cliff dwelling and storage facility that dates back 800 years. Continue reading...

Three-quarters of areas tested show contamination, European Environment Agency saysHeavy metals and a cocktail of dangerous chemicals continue to poison Europe’s seas, with more than three-quarters of areas assessed showing contamination, according to a report.The sea worst affected was the Baltic, where 96% of the assessed areas showed problematic levels of some harmful substances, according to the European Environment Agency. Similar problems were found in 91% of the Black Sea and 87% of the Mediterranean. In the north-east Atlantic, unsafe levels of chemicals or metals were found in 75% of assessed areas. Continue reading...

The Gulf of Carpentaria is being inundated with some of the highest densities of rubbish in the worldThe Gulf of Carpentaria hosts some of Australia’s most remote coastline, but Indigenous rangers say it is being inundated with some of the highest densities of rubbish in the world.In 2018 the Dhimurru rangers, based in Nhulunbuy, in eastern Arnhem Land, collected two-and-a-half tonnes of rubbish, 500kg more than in 2017 and roughly five times that collected in 2016. Continue reading...

Production must end now, says first ever estimate of plastic’s cradle-to-grave impact

Exclusive: Movement creates 1,280 new groups to boost numbers in deprived areasCubs and scouts are marching back into inner cities and have formed 1,280 new packs, troops and colonies in the most deprived parts of Britain over the past five years.The 112-year-old Scout movement has boosted membership in some of the UK’s poorest areas by 20,000 since 2014, according to figures published on Wednesday. New sections have opened on estates such as Byker in Newcastle and Wythenshawe in south Manchester but also in non-urban areas of deprivation such as Jaywick, an Essex seaside town named among the poorest in Britain. Continue reading...

Scalloped hammerheads were at the Nausicaá aquarium in the French port of Boulogne, near CalaisThirty hammerhead sharks captured on the Great Barrier Reef and exported to a French aquarium over an eight-year period have all died in captivity and the Australian government says it knows nothing about it.The deaths, which are the subject of legal action by Sea Shepherd France, could put a spotlight on the trade of threatened sharks caught in Australian waters because of a federal law that allows them to continue to be commercially fished. Continue reading...

Soft-drink brand’s products make up nearly 12% of litter found, says Surfers Against SewageCoca-Cola bottles and cans are the most commonly found items of packaging pollution on British beaches, making up nearly 12% of all litter, research by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS)has found.The results came from a series of 229 beach cleans organised by the anti-pollution campaigning group in April, which found close to 50,000 pieces of waste. About 20,000 of these carried identifiable brands, of which Coca-Cola was the leader, followed by Walkers crisps, Cadbury’s, McDonald’s and Nestlé. Continue reading...

International Maritime Organization aims to halve global emissions by 2050This week is the 74th meeting of the marine environmental protection committee of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and it represents one of the best hopes of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from a large and growing sector. Continue reading...

More people in UK are eating lunch on the go, report finds, in turn generating more wasteBritain’s growing “lunch on the go” habit is generating nearly 11bn items of packaging waste a year, much of which is not recycled, a survey has found.Workers are buying takeaway and fast food lunches more than they did five years ago, according to research from the environmental charity Hubbub, generating 10.7bn separate items of waste over a year, the charity estimates, from sandwich boxes to crisp packets and napkins. Continue reading...

The beloved science educator and children’s show host appeared on Last Week Tonight to help explain carbon-pricingBill Nye is done messing around. Look out, because while you might not typically associate angry talk with the normally-mild-mannered “Science Guy” Nye, when it comes to the threat of global climate change, he has – understandably, perhaps – lost his patience. And how.The beloved science educator and television personality, best known for his children’s program Bill Nye the Science Guy, appeared on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Sunday in a segment on the plan to fight climate change, and started throwing the F-word about – a lot. (The plan is sponsored by the US House of Representatives’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the longtime environmental advocate and Senator Ed Markey, and is known as the Green New Deal.) Continue reading...

Agency had one afternoon to accept government’s approval of Adani groundwater plan, emails revealEnvironment groups and the Greens have called for the winner of Saturday’s election to review the Adani mine decision, after it emerged pressure was put on the CSIRO to accept the government’s approval of the mine’s groundwater plans.The ABC reported on Tuesday that emails it obtained under freedom-of-information laws revealed the agency had a single afternoon to accept the federal government’s approval of Adani’s groundwater management plan. Continue reading...

A retired naval officer dove in a submarine nearly 36,000ft into the deepest place on Earth, only to find what appears to be plastic

Greenpeace supporters abseil off bridge unfurling banners calling on political parties to declare a ‘climate emergency’Thirteen people have been arrested after environmental activists abseiled off the Sydney Harbour Bridge to demand action on climate change.The Greenpeace supporters launched themselves from a public walkway on the western side of the structure at dawn on Tuesday, calling on the major federal political parties to declare a “climate emergency”. Continue reading...

Report says plastics adding to death tolls in the developing world from easily prevented diseases

Shareholder resolution to be voted on at the company’s annual meeting next weekA coalition of major City investors have emerged as key players in forcing BP to be more transparent in how it fights climate change.Investors holding just under a tenth of all BP shares, equivalent to more than £10bn in value at Monday’s prices, put their names to the shareholder resolution, to be voted on at the company’s annual meeting next week, the Climate Action 100+ investor group revealed on Tuesday. Continue reading...

In the final episode before the election, politicians battle it out over Newstart rate, climate change and housing policyNews Corp Australia has triggered a rare moment of unity in the fractious 2019 federal election. Representatives from the Liberals to the Greens, appearing on Monday night’s Q&A on the ABC, hopped into the media giant over its coverage of Bill Shorten and his speech referencing his mother’s life story.Related: First homebuyers' scheme: who gets it and will it work? – explainer Continue reading...

The Last Week Tonight host focused on climate change, stressing the importance of radical interventionJohn Oliver has turned his focus to climate change in an urgent new episode of Last Week Tonight, referring to the situation as “critical”.Related: John Oliver on lethal injections: 'horrifying' and 'unpredictable' Continue reading...

Springwatch presenter will no longer attend Dogstival after ongoing protests from shooting communityA festival appearance by broadcaster and wildlife presenter Chris Packham has been cancelled because of ongoing protests over his campaign against shooting birds.Organisers of the Dogstival event in the New Forest said they were concerned about safety of the public after death threats received by Packham. Continue reading...

Exclusive: if Trump Tower and other sites do not cut emissions, Trump Organization will owe $2.1m a year from 2030Donald Trump’s reluctance to address climate change is set to cost his business empire millions of dollars in fines levied by New York City due to the amount of pollution emitted by Trump-owned buildings.Related: Could climate change submerge Joe Biden's presidential bid? Continue reading...

Speaking for Forestry England, Kate Humble says she finds comfort in talking to an oak treeThe custodians of England’s forests have launched a drive to encourage more people to make regular visits to woodland to improve mental wellbeing.They claim that research shows that two or three short jaunts to woods and forests dramatically improve mental as well as physical health. Continue reading...

Morrison government accused of failing to take action to reduce emissions or pursue adaptation measuresA group of Torres Strait Islanders from low-lying islands off the northern coast of Australia will on Monday lodge a complaint with the United Nations human rights committee against the Australian government, alleging climate inaction.The complaint will assert that the Morrison government has failed to take adequate action to reduce emissions or pursue proper adaptation measures on the islands and, as a consequence, has failed fundamental human rights obligations to Torres Strait Islander people. Continue reading...

A quick tour of the big stores shows they could do much more to cut out plasticCraig Curtis, the new president of the Recycling Association, is staring with exasperation at the aisle full of salad leaves. He presses a bag of rocket.“Do you hear that?” he says, as the plastic crackles. “That’s laminated. One sort of plastic on the outside, and a totally different sort on the other.” He shakes his head at the supermarket display. “You can’t recycle it. It just goes into waste. If these things were made from one polymer, we could recycle all of it.” Continue reading...

The former vice-president has yet to put forward a plan to address global warming, which polls suggest is the single most important issue for DemocratsClimate change is transforming life by redrawing coastlines, turning vast areas of forest into infernos, stirring enormous storms and spreading exotic diseases. An indirect casualty of this upheaval could be Joe Biden’s hopes of becoming US president.Biden, frontrunner in the polls to secure the Democratic nomination, has not laid out a plan to address the crisis. Continue reading...

Residents of Tchula feel abandoned. Now, with the Rev William Barber, it’s ‘time to make noise’When Tchula lake overran its banks, after heavy rains, Walter Coats’s home was one of the first to succumb.“I left that morning when I saw the waters start rising,” Coats said. “When I came back I couldn’t even get in the house.” Continue reading...

Mass-breeding of the highly intelligent creatures is ecologically unjustified, a new study saysPlans to create octopus farms in coastal waters round the world have been denounced by an international group of researchers. They say the move is ethically inexcusable and environmentally dangerous, and have called on private companies, academic institutions and governments to block funding for these ventures.The researchers say that farming octopuses would require the catching of vast amounts of fish and shellfish to feed them, putting further pressure on the planet’s already threatened marine livestock. Continue reading...

Planes going to the finals in Spain and Azerbaijan will emit 35,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide – climate activists want change

Review will assess impact of dirty air on health and will support NHS efforts to go greenThe health secretary has described polluted air as a “slow and deadly poison” and warned of a growing national health emergency.Matt Hancock has commissioned a review of the impact of dirty air on health, including updated estimates of the number of new cases of illness that could be caused by air pollution by 2035. Continue reading...