Environment | The Guardian

Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad once worked for Shell. Now, as the country gears up to host the biodiversity Cop16, she is calling for a just transition away from fossil fuelsShe is one of the biggest opponents of fossil fuel on the world stage - but Susana Muhamad's political career was sparked in the halls of an oil company. It began when she resigned as a sustainability consultant with Shell in 2009 and returned home to Colombia. She was 32 and disillusioned, a far cry from the heights she would later reach as the country's environment minister, and one of the most high-profile progressive leaders in global environmental politics.Muhamad joined Shell an idealistic 26-year-old. I really thought that you could make a huge impact within an energy company on the climate issue, especially because all their publicity was saying that they were going to become an energy company, meaning they will not be only a fossil fuel company," she says, when we meet in the Colombian embassy in London. Continue reading...

Forests around world being changed from carbon sinks into carbon sources, making it harder to slow global heatingWildfires are burning through the carbon budget that humans have allocated themselves to limit global heating, a study shows.The authors said this accelerating trend was approaching - and may have already breached - a critical temperature threshold" after which fires cause significant shifts in tree cover and carbon storage. Continue reading...

Social media stars of 367 Collins Street welcome baby birds to the nest

A grueling heatwave resulted in five students being treated for general weakness' during a sports meetAs a grueling heatwave baked the US south-west this week, there were reports of at least three students being taken to the hospital with heat-related injuries. The injuries highlight the effects of extreme heat on health as the country struggles to grapple with increasingly severe weather amid the climate crisis.Cal Fire and the fire department in Riverside, east of Los Angeles, reported responding on Tuesday afternoon to a junior high school and high school cross-country meet in the city where they evaluated five juvenile patients for general weakness". Three were transported to a hospital for further evaluation, the agency said. Continue reading...

Damage to sewage systems and pipes means widespread boil water notices and conservation orders could last weeksHurricane Helene left a path of devastation behind, with storm-ravaged areas struggling to access safe water for days because flooding damaged sewage systems, wastewater treatment plants and pipes that deliver drinking water to residents in the affected areas.Boiling water advisories and water conservation orders are in place in counties in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. Continue reading...

Nuclear waste dump in Cumbria pleaded guilty to leaving data that could threaten national security exposed for four years, says regulatorSellafield will have to pay almost 400,000 after it pleaded guilty to criminal charges over years of cybersecurity failings at Britain's most hazardous nuclear site.The vast nuclear waste dump in Cumbria left information that could threaten national security exposed for four years, according to the industry regulator, which brought the charges. It was also found that 75% of its computer servers were vulnerable to cyber-attack. Continue reading...

Proponents say using hallucinogens can spark consciousness shifts' to inspire climate-friendly behaviorsThousands gathered for New York City's annual Climate Week last week to promote climate solutions, from the phaseout of fossil-fuel subsidies to nuclear energy to corporate-led schemes like carbon credits. Others touted a more offbeat potential salve to the crisis: psychedelics.Under the banner of Psychedelic Climate Week, a group of academics, marketers and advocates gathered for a film on pairing magic mushrooms with music, a discussion on funding ketamine-assisted therapy and a panel on Balancing Investing & Impact with Climate & Psychedelic Capital". Continue reading...

The emissions impact is obvious but with full employment in construction, approving three mine extensions is saying you want workers there rather than building homes

Employers hiring migrant workers through a federal program must provide food or cooking facilities. But those picking our fresh food have no access to adequate mealsOn an August afternoon, Pablo stared down at a foam plate sloshing with flavorless pinto beans and a particularly bad version of huevos a la Mexicana. The simple, usually delicious scramble of eggs, tomatoes, onions and jalapenos is difficult to mess up. But if anyone can find a way to make it unpalatable, it's the cook at his labor camp.Soupy eggs are the last thing the 42-year-old from western Mexico wants to eat. But after a 12-hour day harvesting tobacco in the brutal and sometimes deadly summer heat, he must eat - and this was far from the worst meal he's been given. A few weeks ago, fellow farm workers got sick due to raw and moldy food they were forced to purchase. Continue reading...

Camera installed inside a tree hollow in NSW forest to raise awareness of the plight of the endangered possum

The Idaho camp where Nora Zavala Gallion harvested sugar beets in 1968 felt like a prison because it had been one - for Japanese Americans in the second world warMy mother, Nora Zavala Gallion, was 11 years old when she first set foot inside the farm labor camp in Caldwell, Idaho. It was 1968, and her family had traveled over 2,000 miles (3,218km) by car from Texas's Rio Grande valley to harvest sugar beets as migrant laborers.While my family had worked numerous crops across the country for decades, the girl who would become my mother sensed something very different about this location. The camp's small, dilapidated wooden living quarters were called barracks" and featured open, latrine-style bathrooms and showers. Somehow, my mother knew this place had a troubling past. Continue reading...

Though utilities' mission is to provide clean water, their trade groups for decades have often fiercely opposed initiatives to improve qualitySeveral unexpected plaintiffs are behind a legal challenge aiming to kill the Environmental Protection Agency's groundbreaking new drinking water limits for highly toxic PFAS: the US's water utilities, represented by their major trade groups.But utility industry opposition to clean water regulations is nothing new. Though utilities' mission is to provide the US with clean and safe water, their trade groups have for decades often fiercely opposed initiatives to improve quality. Continue reading...

The Austrian capital has been spared the worst of recent flooding. Its experience could be a lesson in how to tackle the climate crisisFloods are seemingly unavoidable these days. Florida, North Carolina, Nigeria, Tunisia, Mexico, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Poland and Austria are among the places that have experienced flooding in the last month. Those floods should no longer come as much of a surprise. Climate change leads to more frequent and intense rain almost everywhere on the planet, and most infrastructure, from roads and bridges to canals and hydroelectric dams, is simply not built to withstand such extremes.That's where Vienna stands out. The floods that have deluged central Europe over the past two weeks caused plenty of disruptions in Lower Austria, including to a newly built train station meant to connect the burgeoning suburbs to the city. But aside from some disruption to Vienna's otherwise well-functioning subway system, Viennese homes were largely spared. Why? It's not because Vienna sits on higher ground than the surrounding areas (by and large it does not). The reason the city escaped the worst of the floods is because of human engineering and political foresight dating back to the 1960s, which emerged in response to earlier floods that devastated parts of the city.Gernot Wagner is a climate economist at Columbia Business School. He is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Wiener Klimarat, Vienna's climate council

Tensions ramp up between authorities and property owners who don't want chemical treatment spread on their land

Excessive heat warnings bring elevated wildfire risk, potential for power outages and rising death tollSan Francisco recorded its hottest day of the year on Tuesday, and Phoenix set a record for the hottest 1 October on record, as the National Weather Service predicted record-high fall temperatures across the south-western US.With temperatures hitting 100F (38C) or higher in many places, officials and local media outlets issued warnings that the heat posed a significant threat to property or life". Excessive heat warnings were in place across the region, bringing with it warnings about elevated wildfire risk, the potential for sweeping power outages in California and a rising toll of heat-related deaths, a particularly deadly risk for unhoused people and the elderly. Continue reading...

Ex-president refers to climate crisis as one of the great scams' and plans to attend two fundraisers in oil-rich TexasAs research finds that the deadly Hurricane Helene was greatly exacerbated by global warming, Donald Trump is continuing to deny the climate crisis and court donations from the industry most responsible for planetary heating. Environmentalists worry that he will also gut flood protections and climate policy if he wins November's presidential election.Hours before Helene made landfall in Florida's Big Bend region Thursday night as a major category 4 hurricane, Trump baselessly said nuclear warming", not the climate crisis, is the warming that you're going to have to be very careful with". The following day, he said the little hurricane" was partially responsible for attendees leaving his rallies early. Continue reading...

US public sector workers' retirement savings invested in projects that pump out a billion tonnes of emissions a yearPrivate equity firms are using US public sector workers' retirement savings to fund fossil fuel projects pumping more than a billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere every year, according to an analysis.They have ploughed more than $1tn (750bn) into the energy sector since 2010, often buying into old and new fossil fuel projects and, thanks to exemptions from many financial disclosures, operating them outside the public eye, the researchers say. Continue reading...

Workers struggle with dehydration, fatigue dizziness and headaches - but state laws have stripped their protectionsEvery day, Raquel Atlahua begins her work as a roofer bracing for the blistering sun.On the roof, there is no escape from the direct light and heat, and the temperatures in Florida quickly climb as the day progresses. The high humidity and lack of shade make it feel even hotter, and even more difficult to cool down.This is the first of three stories about the US workers who are struggling to survive a summer of extreme heat that shattered records from coast to coast. Parts two and three coming soon. Continue reading...

Why do the mass killers of the fossil fuel industry walk free while the heroes trying to stop them are imprisoned?The sentences were handed down just as Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina. As homes were smashed, trucks swept down roads that had turned into rivers and residents were killed, in the placid setting of Southwark crown court two young women from Just Stop Oil, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, were sentenced to two years and 20 months, respectively, for throwing tomato soup at the glass protecting Van Gogh's Sunflowers. No prison terms have been handed to the people whose companies deliver climate breakdown, causing the deaths of many thousands and destruction valued not at the 10,000 estimated by the court in damage to the painting's frame but trillions.Everywhere we see a farcical disproportion. The same judge, Christopher Hehir, presided over the trial of the two sons of one of the richest men in Britain, George and Costas Panayiotou. On a night out, they viciously beat up two off-duty police officers, apparently for the hell of it. One of the officers required major surgery, including the insertion of titanium plates in his cheek and eye socket. One of the brothers, Costas, already had three similar assault convictions. But Hehir gave them both suspended sentences. He also decided that a police officer who had sex in his car with a drunk woman he had offered to take home" should receive only a suspended sentence. Hehir said he wanted to bring this sad and sorry tale to its end with a final act of mercy". The solicitor general referred the case to the court of appeal for being unduly lenient, and the sentence was raised to 11 months in jail. Continue reading...

At least 468 shot by government controllers last year out of an estimated population of as few as 2,640 in the state's east, advocates say

RMIT-led study recommends a national recycling scheme to reduce the 200,000 tonnes of textiles sent to landfill each year

The smell of chlorine pervades Conyers as residents say BioLab's accident was a danger hiding in plain sightFor Vonnetta West the plume of smoke rising in the sky outside her home in the city of Conyers, Georgia, was a sign not just of immediate risk - but a danger that had been hiding in plain sight for years.The plume was the result of an accident at the BioLab pool and spa chemical company in the city of nearly 20,000 residents about 25 miles east of Atlanta. Tens of thousands of people were impacted by an evacuation order for those immediately nearby or by the wider shelter-in-place order for those further away. The smell of chlorine drifted over much of the Atlanta area. Continue reading...

Government urged to use power to control companies such as Thames Water and reform the industryThames Water and other failing water companies should be placed into special administration to allow the government to tackle much-needed reforms to the industry, campaigners say.Triggering special administration would put Thames and other failing companies in government control, removing company directors and ending the dividends paid to shareholders. The companies could then be transferred to new owners who could be publicly owned or controlled. Continue reading...

The historic North Carolina city was touted as a climate haven' - a reputation deadly Hurricane Helene left in ruinsNestled in the bucolic Blue Ridge mountains of western North Carolina and far from any coast, Asheville was touted as a climate haven" from extreme weather. Now the historic city has been devastated and cut off by Hurricane Helene's catastrophic floodwaters, in a stunning display of the climate crisis's unlimited reach in the United States.Helene, which crunched into the western Florida coast as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday, brought darkly familiar carnage to a stretch of that state that has experienced three such storms in the past 13 months, flattening coastal homes and tossing boats inland. Continue reading...

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Everyday Plastic calls supermarket takeback schemes a diversion and says there is too much plastic packagingSeventy per cent of soft plastic collected in supermarket recycling schemes and tracked after collection ended up being burned, an investigation by campaigners has found.By placing trackers inside packages of soft plastic that were collected by Sainsbury's and Tesco in July 2023 and February 2024, campaigners found that most of them ended up being incinerated rather than recycled. Continue reading...

Fifteen of the nimble, tree-climbing mammals were released last month at secret locations in DevonFifteen pine martens are darting through the woods of Dartmoor for the first time in 150 years after the rare but recovering species was reintroduced into south-west England.The nimble, tree-climbing mustelids were released last month at secret locations in the steep, tree-lined valleys of Devon in what conservationists are hailing as a historic step in the restoration of the region's woodlands. Continue reading...

A project on Spain's Costa Brava is reviving dwindling populations of the prized seafood - and keeping small-scale fishers in businessClinging to almost vertical cliffs on the Costa Brava in north-east Spain, the resort of l'Estartit has a dramatic location but the real drama is unfolding under the waves, where an innovative approach to ancient techniques is helping to revive declining populations of prized cuttlefishCuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) are a valuable catch for Spanish fishers and a popular dish, either on their own or as a key ingredient in seafood paella. However, their numbers have declined on the Catalan coast through a combination of pollution and unregulated recreational fishing. Continue reading...

It's difficult to overstate how rapidly Australians have embraced solar power - there's now more rooftop solar than coal-fired power. The key question is what policymakers can learn from its success

Bethany Beach firefly, found in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, faces dangers to habitat because of climate changeThe US government is seeking to consider a firefly species as endangered for the first time, according to a proposal from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.The Bethany Beach firefly, found in coastal Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, is facing increasing dangers to its natural habitat because of climate change-related events. They include sea level rise, which is predicted to affect all sites within the known distribution by the end of the century, and the lowering of groundwater aquifers. Continue reading...

Birds outnumber residents in Hilario Ascasubi, after deforestation leads them to seek food, shelter and waterThe town of Hilario Ascasubi near Argentina's eastern Atlantic coast has a parrot problem.Thousands of the green, yellow and red birds have invaded, driven by deforestation in the surrounding hills, according to biologists. They bite on the town's electric cables, causing outages, and are driving residents around the bend with their incessant screeching and deposits everywhere of parrot poo. Continue reading...

We learn about butterflies when we are small because it is foreshadowing: you too will change. But they are an imperfect metaphor for what it feels like to liveThe very funny naturalist and writer Redmond O'Hanlon was on a sandbank on the edge of a river in Borneo when hundreds of butterflies started to fly towards him and his travel companion and landed on their boots, trousers, and shirts, and sucked the sweat from our arms."He watched them for a while - there were Whites, Yellows and Blues, Swallow-tails, black, banded, or spotted with blue-greens" - and then stood up and brushed them off gently. Continue reading...

Labor government has undermined case to co-host 2026 UN climate summit with island nations, Dr Maina Talia declares

River erosion has pushed the mountain upwards and added an extra 15 to 50 metres over the past 89,000 yearsClimbing Mount Everest has always been a feat, but it seems the task might be getting harder: researchers say Everest is having something of a growth spurt.The Himalayas formed about 50m years ago, when the Indian subcontinent smashed into the Eurasian tectonic plate - although recent research has suggested the edges of these plates were already very high before the collision. Continue reading...

Calls grow for lifting of moratorium on onshore drilling in England to become policy under new leader

Interstate highway shut down in both directions in the area, as residents urged to evacuate or shelter in placeSome residents east of Atlanta were evacuated while others were told to shelter in place on Sunday to avoid contaminants from a chemical plant fire that sent a huge tower of dark smoke into the air that could be seen from miles away.Interstate 20 was shut down in both directions in the area, the Georgia department of transportation said in a post on X. Reports said traffic was snarled as vehicles backed up. Continue reading...

Lawmakers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties at odds regarding using former airport site to build toxic' facilityResidents of two south Florida counties are feuding over the proposed construction of a huge trash incineration plant that environmentalists say will subject thousands of people to toxic fumes and a risk of polluted drinking water.The mayor of Miami-Dade county, Daniella Levine Cava, settled on a long-disused airport far from any of its own residential neighborhoods as the preferred site to build a $1.5bn replacement for a previous waste-to-energy facility that burned down last year. Continue reading...

The decision comes after a ProPublica and Guardian investigation revealed that the EPA had found that one of the fuels had a huge cancer risk

UK's 142-year history of coal-fired electricity ends as turbines at Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant in Nottinghamshire stop for goodBritain's only remaining coal power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire will generate electricity for the last time on Monday after powering the UK for 57 years.The power plant will come to the end of its life in line with the government's world-leading policy to phase out coal power which was first signalled almost a decade ago. Continue reading...

The lassitude that distinguishes our moment is born of sorrow and buried rage. We act like colonial subjects because, in effect, that's what we areKids these days are such snowflakes! So flaccid and self-involved, so doomy and anxious. If it's not the drugs, it's the screen time, right? I mean, what's their problem?"I try to sidestep conversations like these. Engaging saps so much time and energy. But avoiding them leaves me feeling dirty. Not because I've forgone an opportunity to win an argument, but because I know I've failed to defend those who need and deserve my solidarity. Continue reading...

Two countries agree to modifications beneath Matterhorn peak, one of Europe's highest summitsSwitzerland and Italy have redrawn a border that traverses an Alpine peak as melting glaciers shift the historically defined frontier.The two countries agreed to the modifications beneath the Matterhorn, one of the highest mountains in Europe, which straddles Switzerland's Zermatt region and Italy's Aosta valley. Continue reading...

The Grapevine', which connects the metropolis to the state's agricultural hub, now serves as a window to the effects of climate crisisWildfires. Snowstorms. Falling boulders. DC Williams has long given up on predicting what the day will bring on Interstate 5 near Tejon Pass, an eight-lane stretch of highway that winds through the steep mountains north of Los Angeles.Williams has been an officer with the California Highway Patrol and worked in this area for 11 years. On a chilly day this spring, he wore a thick black jacket even as he sat inside his Ford Explorer on a bridge overlooking the highway. Continue reading...

Rightwing US thinktank claimed in report that non-profit holding trainings is corruptly influencing the courts'A rightwing organization is attacking efforts to educate judges about the climate crisis. The group appears to be connected to Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightwing takeover of the American judiciary who helped select Trump's supreme court nominees, the Guardian has learned.The Washington DC-based non-profit Environmental Law Institute (ELI)'s Climate Judiciary Project holds seminars for lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. It aims to provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation", according to ELI's website. Continue reading...

More than 30 businesses have written to the environment secretary calling for mandatory reporting of wasted foodFood companies should have to report how much they throw away as a first step towards reducing the vast amounts of edible food squandered in the UK, a group of prominent businesses have said.About a third of the food produced globally every year is binned, much of it before it reaches the consumer at a cost of almost 22bn annually to the UK economy. Continue reading...

Noisy miners, butcherbirds and masked lapwings will also go on the offensive to protect their eggs and young

Pawpaw, a tree fruit that can help farmers and the environment, stays resilient in face of a climate crisisAbout five years ago, Matt Feyerabend, co-owner of an Arkansas ice-cream business, wanted to explore new flavors and use more native fruits, so while delivering a batch of product to a restaurant in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, he asked if anyone knew a grower of pawpaws, a tree fruit native to the United States with a flavor described as a mix between a mango and a banana.A server said her father, a veterinarian, had trees on his property. Feyerabend and his wife, Meghan, now annually purchase hundreds of pounds of the fruit from the vet and other growers and sell pawpaw ice-cream and other treats containing the fruit and its seeds. Continue reading...

Research also reveals that a mixture of arable crops and cattle helps improve the biodiversity of the landCows may belch methane into the atmosphere at alarming rates, but new data shows they may play an important role in renewing farm soil.Research by the Soil Association Exchange shows that farms with a mixture of arable crops and livestock have about a third more carbon stored within their soil than those with only arable crops, thanks to the animals'manure. Continue reading...

Intense heat in the north, epic rains in Miami, fires in New Mexico and California. Trump plans for energy dominance', removing protection from mining and drilling on public lands

Conservationists celebrate as efforts to save the Caretta caretta sea turtle, which has existed for 100m years, pay offAfter nearly a quarter of a century observing one of the world's most famous sea turtle nesting grounds, Charikleia Minotou is convinced of one thing: nature, she says, has a way of sending messages".Along the sandy shores of Sekania, on the Ionian island of Zakynthos, what she has seen both this year and last, has been beyond her wildest dreams. The beach, long described as the Mediterranean's greatest maternity ward" for the Caretta caretta loggerhead sea turtle, has become host to not only record numbers of nests, but record numbers of surviving hatchlings as the species makes an extraordinary resurgence. Continue reading...

Supporters rally to Rachel Kyte after criticism of appointment over link to investment firm Quadrature CapitalThe UK's new climate envoy will retain her role on the board of a charity whose founders made a multimillion-pound donation to the Labour party and have investments in fossil fuels, the Guardian has learned.Rachel Kyte, the former World Bank climate chief who was announced as the UK's special representative on climate this week, is on the climate advisory board of Quadrature Climate Foundation, a charity set up by the founders of the Quadrature Capital investment company. Continue reading...