Category Archives: Environment

Australia passes most significant climate law in a decade amid concern over fossil fuel exports

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Deal between Labor government and Greens requires total emissions from big industrial sites to come down, not just be offset

Australia’s parliament has passed the country’s most significant emissions reduction legislation in more than a decade after the government won backing from Greens and independent MPs for a plan to deal with pollution from major industrial sites.

After weeks of closed-door negotiation, a deal was brokered between the Labor government and Greens, a minor party with 15 parliamentarians, that included legislating an explicit requirement that total emissions from major industrial facilities must come down, not just be offset.

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UK is Europe’s worst private jet polluter, study finds

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UK tops all league tables for highly polluting form of travel, with a flight taking off every six minutes last year

The UK is the private jet capital of Europe, with more flights than anywhere else on the continent, analysis has found.

Last year, a private jet set off from the UK once every six minutes, putting the country ahead of the rest of Europe when it comes to the extremely polluting form of travel. Many of these journeys have been called “polluting and pointless” by Greenpeace, as they are so short they could have easily been taken by train – and in one case, cycled in 30 minutes.

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Switzerland and France accused of lack of climate action in ECHR hearing

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Group of Swiss women and French ex-mayor suing their governments in first such cases heard by rights court

The governments of Switzerland and France have been accused of breaching the human rights of their citizens by not acting decisively enough on climate change, at a landmark legal hearing in Strasbourg.

A panel of judges at the European court of human rights heard petitions from a group of Swiss women and a French former mayor seeking to bolster climate action in their countries. Although climate litigation has spread quickly around the world, these are the first such cases to be heard by the ECHR.

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Italian plan to ban lab-grown food criticised as misguided

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Minister says aim is to ‘safeguard our nation’s heritage’ but campaigners say artificial meat holds promise

The Italian government has approved a draft law that would ban food grown in laboratories, including artificial meat, as it seeks to “safeguard our nation’s heritage”.

Under the ban, which needs to be passed in both houses of parliament, those who produce, export or import food grown from animal cells would face fines of up to €60,000 and risk having their manufacturing plants closed.

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Australia politics live: rate rises must stop with inflation coming down, Greens say; Brereton named anti-corruption commissioner

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Commission appointments must be signed off by the governor general. Follow live

Sorry – I am told by a couple of senators that it was “technically” 4.13am.

So expect to see a few bleary-eyed senators in the coffee lines this morning.

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‘We are very vulnerable’: cyclone-hit Vanuatu pins climate hopes on UN vote

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Pacific nation is sponsoring resolution that will ask ICJ to rule on consequences for climate inaction

Last month, twin cyclones tore through Port Vila, the capital of the Pacific nation of Vanuatu. The category-four storms left corrugated iron roofs crumpled like leftover wrapping paper, flooded the streets with waste-ridden mud, cut residents off from water and electricity for several days, and sent many fleeing to hastily established evacuation centres.

Devastation of this sort is becoming more common throughout the Pacific, where rising sea levels are leaving shorelines increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather made more intense by climate change.

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Philadelphians rush to buy bottled water despite officials claiming water is safe after spill

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Residents show skepticism to officials insisting tap water is uncontaminated after chemical spill in the Delaware River

Residents in Philadelphia and nearby have been buying bottled water after a chemical spill upstream in the Delaware River in neighboring Bucks county, despite officials latest advisory insisting tap water was safe to drink at least up to midnight Monday.

The concerns came after a leak late Friday evening at the Trinseo Altuglas chemical facility in Bristol Township spilled between 8,100 and 12,000 gallons of a water-based latex finishing solution into the river, Bucks county health officials said Sunday.

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EU ministers to approve vehicle emissions law after deal with Germany

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Berlin secures concessions over future use of e-fuels after going back on agreement struck last year

EU ministers are expected to approve a draft law on emissions standards for cars on Tuesday, after reaching a deal with Germany over the weekend that ended a damaging row over a key part of Europe’s green deal.

Pascal Canfin, a French centrist MEP who chairs the European parliament’s environment committee, said an EU law that all cars sold from 2035 must produce zero emissions “will be voted unchanged, including by Germany” on Tuesday.

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Australia politics live: Howard says Labor’s dominance won’t last long; emissions bill haggling down to the wire

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The government is yet to strike a deal that will get its safeguard mechanism bill through the upper house. Follow the day’s politics live

Paul Fletcher won’t answer the question of whether or not he will run again in Bradfield.

He is dancing around this question like he is auditioning for the new Fred Astaire biopic. (Tom Holland has the role, and anyone who has seen his Umbrella dance will know why.)

I continue to consider serving the people of Bradfield to be an enormous privilege and … any rational politician always considers what they’re going to do as you come to the end of each term.

I’ve done that before the end of each past term, but what I can tell you is it’s an honour to serve the people of Bradfield. I continue to be committed to it, energetic in doing, so I spent most of Saturday across a whole range of polling booths engaging with my constituents. I enjoyed it. I found it energising, and I believe that the Liberal party has a very important role in serving the people of Australia and certainly in serving the people of Bradfield and that’s something I’m committed to.

I think the first point is that after three terms and 12 years, inevitably, it becomes harder to win a fourth term.

It’s the nature of our democracy of Australian democracy that the electorate starts to look for alternatives.

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Poole harbour: major incident declared over leak from oilfield

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About 200 barrels of reservoir fluid leak into the Dorset harbour, a site of special scientific interest

A major incident has been declared on Sunday following an oil leak from the UK’s largest onshore field into Poole harbour in Dorset.

The incident, which took place at Wytch Farm oilfield in Dorset, resulted in approximately 200 barrels of “reservoir fluid” being released.

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‘Like a vacuum cleaner running all day’: noisy nightlife making Spanish streets ‘uninhabitable’

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Tensions between residents and revellers have reached boiling point after loosening of serving restrictions during Covid

The sun has barely set when the music starts thumping on Madrid’s Calle Ponzano. As queues start to form outside the already heaving bars, the party spills out on to the pavement, leaving customers jostling for space with an ever-growing cacophony of smokers and passersby.

Lost in the fray is the brightly lettered message – pleading with punters to keep the noise down – from banners that flap from balconies above. It is a last ditch effort by those who have found themselves living on the frontline of a battle playing out across Spain as exhausted neighbours face off against raucous drinkers.

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At Menindee, the lifeblood of the people has turned to bitter sludge

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The fight for a healthy Darling-Baaka River is becoming a ‘recurring nightmare’ for the communities that depend on it

The massive fish kills of 2019, which saw a million fish float to the surface of the Darling-Baaka River, are no longer just a catastrophic ecological anomaly but a sustained and “recurring nightmare” for far-west New South Wales.

That’s what one Menindee resident, Dick Arnold, told me this week, as we waited around the town of 551 people for the state government to respond to the crisis. For the second time in four years the community has been smacked in the face with blatant evidence that the river they depend on is painfully sick. It is usually hard to stop people talking about water in Menindee, but for many the recent fish deaths mark a tipping point in the ongoing struggle for a healthy river that is too painful to discuss.

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‘Spectacular’ spiny crayfish samples rec amid Lismore floods key to mapping species

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Australia Museum says 20-year-old collection will help understand and conserve threatened animals, which are sensitive to climate change

As floods devastated Lismore, a group of ecologists waited anxiously for a break in the weather so they could move an important scientific collection of “spectacular” spiny crayfish to a new home at the Australian Museum.

The samples of the crayfish were collected more than 20 years ago from deep within the rainforests of north-eastern NSW and southern Queensland by Dr Jason Coughran, a freshwater ecologist.

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Germany faces EU backlash over U-turn on phasing out combustion engine

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Row a further signal of tensions over the green deal landmark proposals to tackle climate crisis

Germany is facing a growing backlash inside the EU over its U-turn on a law to phase out the combustion engine in new cars by 2035, despite signs of an end to the standoff with Brussels.

The row comes amid growing concerns over France’s push to include nuclear across a swathe of laws on green technologies, a further signal of tensions over the EU green deal, landmark proposals to tackle the climate crisis.

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Plan to test for dioxins near Ohio train derailment site is flawed, experts say

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Test relies on visual inspection of ash to then check soil for toxins, which is ‘unlikely to give a complete picture’ of contamination

A plan to test for toxic dioxins near the site of a February train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, is flawed and unlikely to find the dangerous substances, independent chemical pollution researchers in the US who reviewed the testing protocol told the Guardian.

Initial soil testing already revealed dioxin levels hundreds of times above the threshold that Environmental Protection Agency scientists have found poses a cancer risk, but that sampling was limited in scope.

Arcadis will largely rely on visual inspections of the ground to find evidence of dioxins, instead of systematically testing soil samples that may contain the compounds, which is standard protocol.

The plan does not say how low the levels of dioxin the company will check for will be.

Testing will only be conducted up to two miles from the accident site when ash has been found up to 20 miles away.

The testing is limited to soil and does not include food or water.

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The Greens face one of the biggest decisions of their political lives as Labor’s climate policy hangs in the balance

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Some Greens want to pass the safeguard mechanism changes and keep fighting on fossil fuels while others want to attack it as a Coalition creation that can’t be redeemed

The future of one of Labor’s signature climate policies – updating the safeguard mechanism to deal with industrial greenhouse gas emissions – hangs in the balance. The government held off pushing it through parliament this week while negotiations continued with the Greens and key independent senator David Pocock over a potential deal to strengthen it.

The design of the policy is not the Greens’ responsibility, but what happens next is largely up to its party room – with the Coalition opposed, the government can’t get its legislation through without their support. The minor party is divided. Its 15 members will meet through the weekend ahead of a potential decision by Monday. It could go either way. Given the party operates on a consensus model that allows time to find common ground, it could also remain unresolved into next week.

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‘We are losing debates’: combustion engine row divides Germany’s coalition

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Green party accuses FDP of gambling away country’s reputation after last-minute blocking of phase-out from 2035

A clash over climate protection measures is threatening to unravel Germany’s three-party governing alliance, after the Green party accused its liberal coalition partners of gambling away the country’s reputation by blocking a EU-wide phase-out of internal combustion engines in cars.

“You can’t have a coalition of progress where only one party is in charge of progress and the others try to stop the progress,” the country’s vice-chancellor and economy minister, Robert Habeck, said at a meeting of the Green party’s parliamentary group in Weimar on Tuesday.

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Australia politics live: Lidia Thorpe knocked to ground in struggle with police at anti-trans rights speaker’s Canberra event

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Independent senator attempts to step up to podium after Pauline Hanson speaks in support of Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull. Follow the day’s news

Mark Butler says part of the issue is that vaping was allowed to “explode” so it’s a case of putting the genie back in the bottle – but he says the government is determined to do it, so the tobacco industry doesn’t win.

A parent told us last week that they found in their very young child’s pencil case, not a 16/17-year-old but a very young child’s pencil case, a vape that was deliberately designed to look like a highlighter pen. I mean, these things are insidious.

They are causing very real damage not just to the health of very young children but to behavioural issues at schools as well.

This is now the biggest behavioural issue in primary schools. I mean, this is this is an industry shamelessly marketing, not just to teenagers but to young children. When you look at these things, with pink unicorns on them and bubblegum flavors, these aren’t marketed to adults.

This is an industry that is trying to create a new generation of nicotine addicts so they get around all of the hard work. Our country and other countries have done over recent decades to stamp out smoking.

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Labor and Greens could agree to compromise on non-fossil fuel industries in safeguard mechanism

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Greens in internal negotiations over backing down on demand for ban on new coal and gas projects in Labor’s climate policy

Labor could agree to treat existing non-fossil fuel industries – such as cement, aluminium and steel – differently to new coal and gas developments in a bid to reach agreement with the Greens on a signature climate policy.

But it is unclear whether the possible compromise on the design of the safeguard mechanism would be enough to win support for the Albanese government’s plan, which requires major industrial polluting sites to reduce emissions intensity onsite cuts or buy carbon offsets.

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Canada scientists create new method to break down toxic ‘forever chemicals’

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University of British Columbia researchers develop silica-based material with ability to absorb wider range of harmful chemicals

Researchers at a Canadian university have made a breakthrough they hope will dramatically shorten the lifespan of the thousands of toxic “forever chemicals” that persist in clothing, household items and the environment.

Scientists at the University of British Columbia announced on Wednesday that they had developed a new silica-based material with ability to absorb a wider range of the harmful chemicals, and new tools to break them apart them.

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