Environment | The Guardian

Activists all born after 1990 gather at key roundabout to highlight dangers of climate change

Scientists are warning against new legislation to grow Iceland’s fish farming industry, but industry is pressuring for a go-aheadA five-fold expansion in open net fish farms that scientists believe could decimate Iceland’s wild salmon stocks is pitting Big Aquaculture against ecologists in the country.Next month, a parliamentary bill is expected to extend farm licenses from 10 to 16 years, while omitting critics from oversight panels and handing primary monitoring powers to industry. Continue reading...

Met comes under pressure to crack down on the Extinction Rebellion demonstratorsScotland Yard has defended its response to the rolling protests in London that have caused disruption to millions and pushed climate change towards the top of the national news agenda.The Metropolitan police has come under increasing pressure to crack down on the Extinction Rebellion demonstrators who have blocked transport networks in the capital in recent days; not least from the home secretary, Sajid Javid, who has urged officers to “take a firm stance”. Continue reading...

Home secretary asks police to be firm against demonstrators ‘disrupting the lives of others’Sajid Javid has called on police to use the “full force of the law” against Extinction Rebellion protesters causing disruption in London to draw attention to the issue of climate change.The home secretary, who is positioning himself for a run at the Conservative party leadership, made a series of tweets condemning “any protesters who are stepping outside the boundaries of the law”. Continue reading...

An orchestra, a village, an entire country: the movement to rein in greenhouse gas emissions is growingWe are all doomed, it is said. Carbon dioxide is amassing in the atmosphere at levels not seen for millions of years when there were trees at the South Pole and Florida was under water. We have barely a decade to make amends. Protesters are on the streets.But huge numbers of people have not given up. Not yet. Call them the carbon cutters. They are companies and cities, niche groups and nations. They are commuters and communes, off-gridders and off-setters, investors and institutions – and countless individuals, cutting their meat intake, installing solar panels, eschewing gas guzzlers and long-haul flights. Continue reading...

If Mississippi reflects on the deep, systemic inequalities its plantation economy created, perhaps it will see those inequalities are exacerbated by climate changeClimate change, I was told when buying a coffee, is not a “polite” topic of conversation in Natchez, Mississippi.The city sits on the legendarily volatile Mississippi River, which is straining against an aging system of levees. Considered the oldest permanent settlement on the Mississippi, Natchez is perched on a bluff over the river’s eastern banks. Three hundred miles upriver from New Orleans, Natchez was once a bastion of the old south: steamships moved enslaved people and cotton to market, enriching planters who lived in “Natchez-over-the-Hill”. Continue reading...

Nine years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Trump administration is exacerbating the industry’s ‘systemic failures’, report warnsOffshore oil and gas drilling in the US is plagued by “systemic failures” in oversight that are being worsened by Trump administration attempts to expand drilling and roll back safety requirements, a new report has warned.The analysis of public documents by the conservation group Oceana found that while some minor improvements have been made since the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, a system of lax oversight, paltry fines and overstretched inspectors risks further major oil spills. Continue reading...

High-quality international offsets should be part of any credible policy, industry saysBusiness groups are defying the Morrison government’s political assault on the use of international permits, arguing a credible climate policy should include access to high-quality international offsets, because they are a key mechanism to help Australia meet its Paris target.With climate change persisting as a significant campaign flashpoint, the chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, James Pearson, told Guardian Australia international permits were part of the toolkit for mitigating climate change in a cost-effective way. Continue reading...

Company rejected scientific advice its groundwater modelling was ‘not fit for purpose’The federal government approved groundwater plans for the Adani coal project despite acknowledging the risk that the project would breach environmental approvals and draw excessive water from an ancient springs complex.Handwritten briefing notes, released publicly by Geoscience Australia and first reported by the ABC, detail how Adani rejected advice that its groundwater modelling was “not fit for purpose”. Continue reading...

Nation known for its natural beauty is under pressure with extinctions, polluted rivers and blighted lakesA report on the state of New Zealand’s environment has painted a bleak picture of catastrophic biodiversity loss, polluted waterways and the destructive rise of the dairy industry and urban sprawl.Environment Aotearoa is the first major environmental report in four years, and was compiled using data from Statistics New Zealand and the environment ministry. Continue reading...

Police cells filling rapidly, with reports of people being taken to Luton, Brighton and EssexThere have been more than 400 arrests linked to the Extinction Rebellion protests across London and reports suggest the capital’s cells are rapidly filling up.The Metropolitan police would not release up-to-date figures on cell capacity, but data from two years ago showed they had 799 cells available across London. With cuts to policing budgets, this number is likely to have fallen, so reports that cell space is under pressure are credible. Continue reading...

Demonstrators also hit rail network as number of arrests across week rises to 400More than 100 people were arrested on Wednesday in the climate protests that have caused major disruption in central London, Scotland Yard said, taking the total number of arrests to almost 400.Activists stepped up the demonstrations on their third day, targeting the capital’s rail network and the home of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Continue reading...

Research by author reveals corporations and aristocrats are the biggest landownersHalf of England is owned by less than 1% of its population, according to new data shared with the Guardian that seeks to penetrate the secrecy that has traditionally surrounded land ownership.The findings, described as “astonishingly unequal”, suggest that about 25,000 landowners – typically members of the aristocracy and corporations – have control of half of the country. Continue reading...

Chefs won’t use red-listed seafood including farmed Atlantic salmon and east coast wild prawnsSustainably sourced fish will be top of the menu in some of Australia’s best restaurants after 40 well-known chefs signed up to the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s Good Fish project.The restaurants have all pledged not to source or serve seafood that is red-listed in the Sustainable Seafood Guide, published by the society. Continue reading...

Greens leader has some clear expectations of Bill Shorten, particularly on climate change and blocking the Adani coalmineRecently, the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, made a private overture to the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, a contact reflecting his view that Shorten, in the absence of “one hell of an upset”, will be prime minister on 18 May.In the event Di Natale’s working supposition is correct, and Shorten goes on to win the campaign, the Greens are Labor’s mostly likely dance partners in the Senate for a range of progressive reforms the ALP is taking to the contest, particularly climate change, which was the focus of the recent overture. Continue reading...

TfL turns off wifi on tube in bid to thwart group’s plans to disrupt public transport networkClimate activists have kept control of four sites in London for a second night, with police saying they have caused “serious disruption” affecting half a million people in the city.After the Extinction Rebellion activist group threatened to disrupt the city’s public transport network on Wednesday, Transport for London disabled wifi on the underground at the request of the British Transport Police. Continue reading...

Financial sector warned it risks losses from extreme weather and its stakes in polluting firmsThe global financial system faces an existential threat from climate change and must take urgent steps to reform, the governors of the Bank of England and France’s central bank have warned, writing in the Guardian.In an article published in the Guardian on Wednesday aimed at the international financial community, Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, and François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Banque de France, said financial regulators, banks and insurers around the world had to “raise the bar” to avoid catastrophe. Continue reading...

Just 147 adult kākāpō are alive today in their native New Zealand, but scientists hope their fortunes are turning aroundThe world’s fattest species of parrot has had a record-breaking breeding season in New Zealand, with scientists saying the fortunes of the critically-endangered bird are finally turning around.There are only 147 adult kākāpō alive today, although a few hundred years ago they were one of New Zealand’s most common birds, before being hunted to the brink of extinction, killed by introduced pests, and losing their forest homes to farming. Continue reading...

Sarah Hanson-Young says party is not afraid to use its numbers in the Senate to push Bill Shorten to back key parts of its plansThe Greens will push Labor to back key parts of its new environment strategy – including a $2bn nature fund – in exchange for crucial support of the opposition’s climate change policy in the Senate.Flagging the party’s readiness to negotiate over energy policy if Labor wins the election, the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the party was not afraid to use its numbers on the crossbench to extract stronger commitments from Bill Shorten on the environment. Continue reading...

Water buyback criticised over the lack of open tender and the low reliability of water licence purchasedDespite questions in the Senate, calls for papers and freedom of information requests, mystery still surrounds the reason the former agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce chose the companies he did for almost $200m of water buybacks in 2017.The buybacks of water using funds allocated for purchasing environmental water under the Murray-Darling Basin plan have been controversial because they proceeded without open tender and, once announced, were criticised because of the reliability of the water purchased. Continue reading...

People taking part in protests in London and Edinburgh explain their reasons for doing soNathan, who was into his second day of protest, was sitting in the road in Piccadilly Circus in front of a large “rebel for life” banner laid across the ground. He was wearing boots stained blue with spray chalk. Continue reading...

Extinction Rebellion protesters continue action after more than 100 arrested overnight

As bird is found with large amounts of lead in its body, a biologist asks ‘Is Yellowstone as protected as we once thought?’The pioneering golden eagle took to the skies above Yellowstone national park in the fall and flew north, to areas where humans were hunting game. A few months later it returned to the park and was found on the ground, dead.Scientists performing a necropsy on the creature, the first to be tagged with a radio transmitter in the park, made an unhappy discovery: it had been poisoned by lead. They are now raising concerns over whether US national parks are as safe for wildlife as they seem. Continue reading...

Garret Graves has seen the damage at home in Louisiana – but don’t expect him to embrace the Green New Deal

Exclusive: Green group’s intervention seen as a hurry up to Labor, which is yet to produce its final policyAn influential green group is seeking concrete commitments from the major parties and potential crossbenchers for an overhaul of environmental protection laws and the establishment of new independent regulatory agencies, before Australians cast their votes on 18 May.Lyndon Schneiders, the national campaigns director of the Wilderness Society, wrote widely to politicians on Monday seeking agreement to an ambitious legislative and regulatory overhaul – but the hurry up is directed predominantly at Labor, which has offered an in-principle commitment but has not yet produced a final policy, and the people likely to form the crossbench in the next parliament. Continue reading...

Climate group occupies major landmarks in campaign that could last several days

Study finds even supposedly pristine region of the Pyrenees is polluted, but impact on human health remains unknownMicroplastic is raining down on even remote mountaintops, a new study has revealed, with winds having the capacity to carry the pollution “anywhere and everywhere”.The scientists were astounded by the quantities of microplastic falling from the sky in a supposedly pristine place such as the French stretch of the Pyrenees mountains. Researchers are now finding microplastics everywhere they look; in rivers, the deepest oceans and soils around the world. Continue reading...

Death of Yangtze giant softshell turtle came a day after artificial insemination attemptThe world’s rarest turtle has moved closer to extinction after a female died in a Chinese zoo, leaving just three known members of the species.The Yangtze giant softshell turtle, believed to be more than 90 years old, died in Suzhou zoo on Saturday, according to the Suzhou Daily. Continue reading...

Not a single leatherback nested at the Chacocente reserve this year as the species faces threats of poaching and warming seasEvery year, from November through March, leatherback sea turtles arrive to the secluded shores of the Río Escalante Chacocente wildlife reserve on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast to lay their eggs.Though leatherback nesting habits vary, Chacocente has been a reliable egg-laying site for as long as conservationists have collected nesting data. Continue reading...

Imports of waste from across the country have turned parts of the state into ‘a toilet bowl’ – and residents are fighting backWest Jefferson, Alabama, a somnolent town of around 420 people north-west of Birmingham, was an unlikely venue to seize the national imagination. Now, it has the misfortune to be forever associated with the “poop train”.David Brasfield, a retired coalminer who has lived in West Jefferson for 45 years, thought at first the foul stench came from the carcass of a shot pig. By the time he realized that human feces was being transported from 1,000 miles away to a nearby landfill site, a scene of biblical pestilence was unfolding upon West Jefferson. Continue reading...

Workers begin to empty storage pool – but more critical removal of melted fuel from reactors themselves will be more challengingWorkers at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have begun removing fuel rods from a storage pool near one of the three reactors that suffered meltdowns eight years ago.The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said on Monday that work had begun to remove the first of 566 used and unused fuel assemblies in reactor building No 3. Continue reading...

Disrupting traffic is not enough – we must disrupt our progress towards climate catastropheThe planned choking of traffic in central London on Monday by climate activists of Extinction Rebellion falls somewhere between street theatre and direct action. If it is successful it will be costly for the demonstrators, some of whom plan to be arrested, burdensome for bus passengers who can’t get to work, and vexing for car drivers who (unlike those in emergency vehicles) will be held up. And yet, should it fail, the long-term costs of climate change will be immense for almost everybody now alive and for all our descendents, too.In the short term, the rage of the frustrated motorist remains one of the most powerful political forces in countries like ours. The gilets jaunes movement in France started off in part as a protest against price rises on petrol; the Blair government sustained its first big defeat at the hands of lorry drivers in the fuel protests of 2000, which destroyed a sensible and ecologically necessary plan to raise fuel taxes steadily over time to discourage the use of fossil fuels. Continue reading...

Danny Faure gives speech from submersible 120 metres below surface of Indian OceanThe president of the Seychelles has made a plea for stronger protection of the “beating blue heart of our planet”, in a speech delivered from deep below the ocean’s surface.Danny Faure’s call for action, billed as the first live speech from a submersible, came during a visit to an ambitious British-led science expedition exploring the Indian Ocean depths. Continue reading...

Greens leader reached out to opposition after it committed to the Neg as a way to end the climate warsRichard Di Natale has warned Bill Shorten should ignore the Greens at his peril when it comes to climate change action.The Greens leader committed to hold Labor to account in the Senate on its pledge to legislate the coalition’s national energy guarantee. Continue reading...

With dozens of events next week, many hope arrival of climate punks who’ve swept the UK will be a watershed moment

About 2,300 climate activists have already signed up to help obstruct busy roads next weekEnvironmental campaigners are hoping to mobilise thousands of people to block the streets of central London around the clock next week, in their latest attempt to raise public awareness and provoke action over the destruction of the biosphere.About 2,300 volunteers have signed up with Extinction Rebellion to obstruct some of the capital’s busiest roads for at least three days. Continue reading...

A study of coyote scat in LA found the animals are attracted to fruit in gardens, where they are also finding cats and dogsDoug McIntyre let his cat, Junior, out of the house on a sunny summer morning last June.As Junior walked down the path and into the world, he paid special attention. “I had a funny feeling … just an odd sensation that something was off,” McIntyre, a journalist and radio host, recalled in a column at the time. Continue reading...

Frogs’ legs, a bee on cowslips and a brown bear with its cub Continue reading...

Scientists say stream dubbed ‘most polluted in Europe’ is reminder of effects of intensive farmingWinding between green meadows in the west Flanders countryside, the Wulfdambeek stream is fondly remembered as a place local boys would fill up their water bottles before football games.But research from the University of Exeter has offered a sharp reminder of how intensive farming methods are changing the face of the northern European countryside in ways scientists claim are not being properly understood. Continue reading...

Young people demand action from politicians at synchronised rallies across BritainThousands of students and activists have taken to the streets of more than 50 British towns and cities demanding urgent action on climate change for the third time in as many months.The organisers of the Youth Strike 4 Climate movement said “sizeable events” took place in London, Sheffield, Manchester and Brighton, among other towns and cities. They mirrored events around the world, as protesters from cities as far apart as Helsinki and Delhi took to the streets. Continue reading...

Restoration of unnamed tributary of River Chew offers new habitat for rare wildlifeA lost river has returned to the Somerset countryside for the first time in 70 years, and with it a new habitat for several species of rare and threatened wildlife.The unnamed tributary of the River Chew from the Mendip Hills down to the River Avon was severed by a dam in 1956, when the valley was flooded to form the Chew Valley Lake reservoir that supplies Bristol and Bath. Continue reading...

Tens of thousands of young people in Britain and abroad are demonstrating for climate action in the latest wave of strikes3.57pm BSTWe’re going to close down this live blog now. Thanks for reading and commenting – here’s a summary of the afternoon’s events:3.46pm BSTOn 22 April, the Guardian is hosting an event with Greta Thunberg and Anna Taylor, from the UK Student Climate Network, with an introduction from Caroline Lucas MP, and chaired by the Guardian’s Zoe Williams.You can find out more about this event here. Continue reading...

Air quality assessment advises that occupants of Lewisham development should shut windowsA south London housing development has been approved in an area where air pollution is so high that residents will be advised to keep their windows closed.Nitrogen dioxide exceeds legal limits on the busy road where the development is planned, next to the A2 in Lewisham. An air quality assessment carried out on behalf of the developers found levels of 56.3 micrograms per cubic metre in the area – far above the legal limit of 40µg/m. Continue reading...

Rise of recycling firms has led to friction with the Zabaleen, the city’s informal garbage collectors“People do not just fight over garbage here, I have seen them fight to the death over garbage,” says Samaan Girgis. “There are no rules in this job.”Girgis is one of the Zabaleen (Arabic for “garbage people”), Cairo’s army of informal workers that collects refuse for conversion into valuable raw materials. Girgis lives with his family in the suburb of Manshiyet Nasr, nicknamed “Garbage City”, which is home to Egypt’s largest and most influential Zabaleen community. Continue reading...

Transition to electric vehicles to cut carbon emissions has dominated climate policy debate in the Australian election campaignOne in two Australians would support shifting all sales of new cars to electric vehicles by 2025, according to polling by the Australia Institute.The progressive thinktank surveyed a nationally representative sample 0f 1,536 Australians about their attitudes to electric vehicles. It found support was similar across all states and territories, including 52% in Victoria and Western Australia, 49% in Queensland and 48% in New South Wales. Continue reading...

Millennial Trump supporters are starting to bring scientific reality to their party, but how far are they willing to go?Donald Trump’s indifference, punctuated by bursts of mocking disdain, towards climate change has been indulged and even cheered by his supporters. The president has called climate science “bullshit”, donned a coalminer’s helmet at rallies and defenestrated federal rules designed to cut planet-warming emissions.It is becoming harder, however, for Trump to swat away the unfolding crises caused by global warming. American lives are increasingly ravaged by flooding and wildfires and Democrats have seized the initiative with the Green New Deal resolution, which proposes full-scale societal and economic change to eliminate carbon emissions while investing in education, health, transport and a federal jobs guarantee. Continue reading...

Dozens of demonstrations due on Friday as report shows UK set to miss emissions targetsA fresh wave of youth strikes for climate action will hit towns and cities across the UK on Friday, as a government report revealed that the nation is set to miss its emissions targets.More than 60 demonstrations involving tens of thousands of young people are expected from Parliament Square in London to sites in Leeds, Manchester and Brighton. They follow the global strike on 15 March, when more than 1 million young people across the world took action to demand rapid action to tackle the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Miner expects industry associations to argue against coal subsidiesRio Tinto has signalled it is prepared to quit its membership of industry associations, including the Minerals Council, if it makes public statements inconsistent with Australia’s Paris climate agreement commitment.The company published a global statement on Thursday night setting out its expectations of the industry bodies it belongs to about commentary they make on climate policy. Continue reading...