Category Archives: Environment

South Korean decision to close all coal-fired power plants by 2040 sounds alarm for Australian exports

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Decision announced at Cop30 climate conference signposts risks for Australia’s reliance on fossil fuel exports, analysts say

The Australian government has been urged to prepare for a shift away from thermal coal exports and accelerate green industries after one of its main international customers signed up to close all coal-fired power plants by 2040.

South Korea, Australia’s third-biggest market for coal burned to generate electricity, announced at the Cop30 climate conference in Brazil that it was joining the “powering past coal alliance”, a group of about 60 nations and 120 sub-national governments, businesses and organisations committed to phasing out the fossil fuel.

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With neonicotinoid pesticide ban, France’s birds make a tentative recovery – study

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Analysis shows small hike in populations of insect-eating species after 2018 ruling, but full recovery may take decades

Insect-eating bird populations in France appear to be making a tentative recovery after a ban on bee-harming pesticides, according to the first study to examine how wildlife is returning in Europe.

Neonicotinoids are the world’s most common class of insecticides, widely used in agriculture and for flea control in pets. By 2022, four years after the European Union banned neonicotinoid use in fields, researchers observed that France’s population of insect-eating birds had increased by 2%-3%. These included blackbirds, blackcaps and chaffinches, which feed on insects as adults and as chicks.

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Nature not a blocker to housing growth, inquiry finds

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Commons committee report challenges ‘lazy narrative’ used by ministers that scapegoats wildlife and the environment

Nature is not a blocker to housing growth, an inquiry by MPs has found, in direct conflict with claims made by ministers.

Toby Perkins, the Labour chair of the environmental audit committee, said nature was being scapegoated, and that rather than being a block to growth, it was necessary for building resilient towns and neighbourhoods.

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Factchecking five Coalition claims about net zero, from power prices to the $9tn cost

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As Liberals join Nationals in abandoning a 2050 emissions target, we unpick some of the opposition’s talking points

Are you trying to make sense of some of the big claims made by Liberal and National party MPs for abandoning their support for Australia reaching net zero emissions by 2050?

We’re here to help.

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Biodiversity offsets failed to protect habitat in NSW. Now federal Labor is about to make the same mistakes, critics warn

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Offsets were meant to be a last resort for mitigating environmental damage from development projects, but rapidly became the default

The federal government risks repeating grievous mistakes made in NSW with its proposals to change the way developers compensate for damage to the environment, scientists and legal experts have warned.

As the Coalition tears itself apart again over climate, Labor’s plan to overhaul biodiversity offsets – and nature laws more broadly – has coasted under the radar with comparatively little scrutiny.

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About 1m Ford diesel cars sold in UK with defective emissions controls, court told

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Ford denies having created ‘defeat devices’ in legal action on behalf of 1.6 million owners against five carmakers

About a million Ford diesel cars were sold in the UK with serious defects in components supposed to curb toxic exhaust emissions, the high court has been told.

The highly polluting vehicles were produced and sold between 2016 and 2018 after Ford’s engineers became aware of the issues, and many were never formally recalled or fixed, lawyers said.

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National parks facing ‘nightmare’ under Trump, warns ex-director of service

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Jonathan Jarvis, who led the agency from 2009 to 2017, laid out the dire consequences of not closing parks in shutdown

Americans should “raise hell” to protect US national parks through the “nightmare” of Donald Trump’s presidency, according to a former National Park Service director, amid alarm over the impact of the federal government shutdown.

Jonathan Jarvis claimed the agency is now in the hands of a “bunch of ideologues” who would have no issue watching it “go down in flames” – and see parks from Yellowstone to Yosemite as potential “cash cows”, ripe for privatization.

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London judge rules BHP Group liable for Brazil’s 2015 Samarco dam collapse

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About 600,000 people seeking compensation a decade on from disaster that killed 19 and devastated villages

The global mining company BHP Group has been found liable for the deadly 2015 collapse of a Brazilian dam, in a landmark ruling that could pave the way for a multibillion-dollar payout.

The high court in London on Friday, Mrs Justice O’Farrell ruled that BHP was responsible for the collapse of the Fundão dam in Mariana despite not owing the dam at the time.

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Fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber all Cop30 delegations except Brazil, report says

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One in every 25 participants at 2025 UN climate summit is a fossil fuel lobbyist, according to Kick Big Polluters Out

More than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to the Cop30 climate negotiations in Belém, significantly outnumbering every single country’s delegation apart from the host Brazil, new analysis has found.

One in every 25 participants at this year’s UN climate summit is a fossil fuel lobbyist, according to the analysis by the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition, raising serious questions about the corporate capture and credibility of the annual Cop negotiations.

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The great escape: seal flees killer whales by jumping on to photographer’s boat

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Charvet Drucker captures dramatic video and photos of seal being hunted by orcas in Salish Sea, north-west of Seattle

A wildlife photographer on a whale-watching trip in waters off Seattle captured dramatic video and photos of a pod of killer whales hunting a seal that survived only by clambering on to the stern of her boat.

Charvet Drucker was on a rented 20ft (6 metre) boat near her home on an island in the Salish Sea about 40 miles north-west of Seattle when she spotted a pod of at least eight killer whales, also known as orcas.

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Row over definition of ‘gender’ hangs over Cop30 plans to support women

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Advocates say conservative states’ push to define gender as ‘biological sex’ would backslide on decade-old language within the UN

A row over the definition of the term “gender” threatens to bog down pivotal talks at the Cop30 climate summit.

Before the UN talks in Brazil, hardline conservative states have pushed to define gender as “biological sex” over their concerns trans and non-binary people could be included in a major plan to ensure climate action addresses gender inequality and empowers women.

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Housing secretary tells Labour MPs to vote down planning bill amendment

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Amendment restricts protection for animals to allow faster house building

Housing secretary Steve Reed has told Labour MPs to vote down an amendment to the new planning bill intended to protect British wildlife and its habitats from destruction.

The amendment, which was passed with a large majority in the House of Lords, restricts the most controversial part of the draft bill by removing protected animals such as dormice, badgers, hedgehogs, otters and nightingales, and rare habitats such as wetlands and ancient woodlands, from new rules which allow developers to sidestep environmental laws to speed up house building.

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Amid Japan’s surge in bear attacks, a torrent of AI-generated videos is adding to anxiety

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Videos show schoolgirls fighting off animals, while others show people feeding bears, with some so realistic that users struggled to distinguish between fact and fiction

If a record number of fatal bear attacks wasn’t terrifying enough, experts say a torrent of AI-generated videos in Japan purporting to show people in close encounters with the animals is only adding to public anxiety – and could put people at greater risk.

While headlines about real attacks and disruption appear on a regular basis, monitors of online content are warning social media users not to be taken in by realistic videos on platforms such as TikTok of the animals attacking or interacting with humans.

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Climate-sceptic IPA refuses to reveal funders in fiery Senate inquiry

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Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart has previously donated to Institute of Public Affairs but thinktank won’t say if she remains a donor

A thinktank known for its rejection of the climate crisis and a conservation group that has opposed renewable energy projects refused to identify their funders during a fiery Senate inquiry into climate and energy misinformation on Wednesday.

Chair of the committee, Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, asked Rainforest Reserves Australia’s vice-president, Steven Nowakowski, who had funded nine full-page newspaper advertisements promoting an open letter attacking a shift to renewable energy and promoting nuclear.

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Supply boom in cheaper renewables will seal end of fossil fuel era, says IEA

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Watchdog’s flagship report says rise in low-carbon electricity will make transition ‘inevitable’, despite Trump’s calls to carry on drilling

Renewables will grow faster than any major energy source in the next decade, according to the world’s energy watchdog, making the transition away from fossil fuels “inevitable”, despite a green backlash in the US and parts of Europe.

The world is expected to build more renewable energy projects in the next five years than has been rolled out over the last 40, according to the flagship annual report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

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Israel attacked Palestinian water sources over 250 times in five years, data reveals

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Armed forces and settlers used bombs, dogs, poison and machinery to attack people and infrastructure at key sites

Israeli armed forces and settlers have attacked Palestinian water sources more than 250 times in the past five years, amounting to the most sustained assault on civilian water supplies in recent years, new research reveals.

Bombs, dogs, poison and heavy machinery were among the weapons used to attack Palestinians and their infrastructure at drinking water, irrigation and sanitation sites in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on at least 90 occasions between January 2024 and mid-2025, according to the Pacific Institute, a California-based nonpartisan thinktank tracking water conflicts.

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‘I can’t breathe in this city’: inaction over Delhi’s suffocating pollution sparks rare protest

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The failure by state governments to do anything about pollution means it has often been met with apathy. But at a rare protest anger and frustration were rife

As a familiar smoky evening haze gathered over Delhi, the crowd began to assemble in their hundreds. Mothers and children, students, retirees and environmentalists were all united by a basic but desperate demand: the right to breathe safely in India’s capital.

“Delhi is not a liveable city any more, it’s a death trap,” said Radhika Aggarwal, 33, an engineer who joined the protest on Sunday.

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China’s CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for past 18 months, analysis finds

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World’s biggest polluter on track to hit peak emissions target early but miss goal for cutting carbon intensity

China’s carbon dioxide emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, analysis reveals, adding evidence to the hope that the world’s biggest polluter has managed to hit its target of peak CO2 emissions well ahead of schedule.

Rapid increases in the deployment of solar and wind power generation – which grew by 46% and 11% respectively in the third quarter of this year – meant the country’s energy sector emissions remained flat, even as the demand for electricity increased.

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Data centers meet resistance over environmental concerns as AI boom spreads in Latin America

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An expert describes how communities in some of the world’s driest areas are demanding transparency as secretive governments court billions in foreign investment

This Q&A originally appeared as part of The Guardian’s TechScape newsletter. Sign up for this weekly newsletter here.

The data centers that power the artificial intelligence boom are beyond enormous. Their financials, their physical scale, and the amount of information contained within are so massive that the idea of stopping their construction can seem like opposing an avalanche in progress.

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Agenda for Cop30 agreed as crucial climate talks begin – as it happened

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Ministers and high-ranking officials from nearly 200 countries have gathered in the Amazonian city of Belem, with Brazil insisting this will be ‘the Cop of implementation’

Hundreds lined up for Cop30 on opening morning, with some in Indigenous headdresses and others in trouser suits, writes Dharna Noor, fossil fuels and climate reporter for the Guardian US.

The conference is being held in a massive temporary building in Belem’s Parque da Cidade area. It was still under construction just days ago, but now seems to be ready to use.

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