Category Archives: Environment

Flood-hit Murray River caravan parks miss out on vital holiday tourism as clean-up continues

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Piles of rubbish fill the space normally taken by summer visitors, with businesses facing the loss of a season’s earnings

Caravan parks and more than 100 national parks remain closed across New South Wales and Victoria after widespread flooding damaged infrastructure, filled waterholes with debris and made some areas unsafe for swimming.

The summer holidays would usually be the busiest time of year for the McLean Beach holiday park in Deniliquin, in the NSW Riverina region.

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Carp spawning event fills Murray-Darling flood waters with masses of flailing fish

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Experts say while boom in invasive species is not good news for some native fish, there will be winners – including water birds

In creeks, rivers and flood waters across the Murray-Darling Basin, an uncountable and unfathomable number of invasive carp are turning waters into bubbling masses of flapping and flailing fish.

“It’s quite a sight,” said Dr Matt Herring, an environment consultant. “I walked through one of the schools of carp a few days ago and it’s the first time I’ve trodden on fish with every step.”

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Indonesian government accused of putting lives at risk with zinc mine permit

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In an area prone to natural disasters, residents claim a new mining project has damaged homes and livelihoods and left them fearing for their safety

Villagers in North Sumatra have accused the Indonesian government of putting their lives at risk by allowing a zinc mining firm to operate in an area prone to earthquakes and flooding.

People in the mountainous Dairi Regency claim construction work carried out by Dairi Prima Mineral (DPM) has damaged their homes and livelihoods. They fear for their safety as the mine, which is expected to be operational in 2025, will sit on the Great Sumatran fault.

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News live updates: Albanese flags Australian interest in Papua New Guinea hydro and hydrogen; NSW and Victoria rule out Pell state funeral

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Victorian premier says there will not be a state service for cardinal, out of respect for victim-survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. Follow live

Visa processing problems in spotlight

Pat Conroy acknowledged ongoing visa processing issues and said the government was “hopeful that we can get a resolution on that issue”:

People in Papua New Guinea are also very keen on our Pacific engagement visa, which is about creating 3,000 permanent migration spots each year into Australia … and there’s also lots of interest in Papua New Guineans working, studying in Australia as well.

His message around democracies is that [it is] incumbent upon politicians in both countries [to] defend democracy and we defend democracy by demonstrating it’s the best system to deliver actual benefits for the people that we govern. So that’s about investing in stronger health outcomes, lifting stronger economic outcomes.

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UK coal-burning power plant to stay open two years longer than planned

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Ratcliffe-on-Soar to be kept viable until late 2024 after ministers make request prompted by energy crisis

A Nottinghamshire coal-burning power plant will stay open for two years beyond its planned closure date after a call from ministers prompted by the UK’s energy crisis.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar had initially been pencilled in to shut in 2022, but last year said it would have an initial extension until 31 March 2023.

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‘Cool’: nine-year-old finds rare, ancient shark tooth on Maryland beach

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Molly Sampson found an Otodus megalodon shark species tooth at a beach near her home in Maryland while hunting for fossils

For Christmas, nine-year-old Molly Sampson and her sister Natalie, 17, asked their parents for one thing: insulated waders, to “go shark’s-tooth hunting like professionals”, said Molly’s mother, Alicia Sampson.

When the waders arrived from Santa, Molly told the Guardian, she declared that she would be looking “for a Meg”, or megalodon tooth, and ventured to Maryland’s Calvert Beach to hunt fossils on Christmas Day with Natalie and their father, Bruce Sampson.

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UAE to launch Cop28 presidency with oil boss tipped for leading role

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Sultan Al Jaber, chief of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, expected to be named president of global climate talks

The United Arab Emirates will launch its presidency of global climate talks on Thursday, with the head of its national oil company likely to be given the leading role.

Sultan Al Jaber has served as climate envoy to the country, and is chief of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), the world’s twelfth-largest oil company by production, and is hotly tipped to take on the pivotal role of president of the talks.

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Honduran environmental defenders shot dead in broad daylight

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Aly Domínguez and Jairo Bonilla, co-founders of grassroots resistance group to iron ore mine in Guapinol, murdered in street

Two environmental defenders have been shot dead in broad daylight in Honduras, triggering fresh calls for an independent investigation into the persecution and violence against a rural community battling to stop an illegally sanctioned mine.

Aly Domínguez, 38, and Jairo Bonilla, 28, from Guapinol in northern Honduras, were murdered on Saturday afternoon as they returned home on a moped after finishing work collecting payments for a cable company. They were intercepted by armed assailants and died at the scene, according to relatives.

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MPs to hear plan to get rural households to run heating on vegetable oil

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George Eustice says adapted kerosene boilers can run on ‘hydro-treated vegetable oil’ and cut emissions by 88%

A proposal to incentivise households in rural areas to run their heating systems on vegetable oil is to be put to parliament.

The former environment secretary George Eustice will introduce a bill proposing the removal of duties on renewable liquid heating fuels and incentives to replace kerosene in existing boilers.

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Australia news live: huge solar venture backed by Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes collapses

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Sun Cable placed in voluntary administration. Follow the day’s news live

Australian involvement in construction of Aukus submarines important, acting defence minister says

More on submarines. In an interview with ABC Radio, the veterans affairs and acting defence minister, Matt Keogh, has reaffirmed the government’s confidence it can reach its deadline of acquiring nuclear submarines by the end of the next decade.

We’re certainly alive to the concerns that were raised in that letter that those congressmen wrote, but we’ve been engaging with the Biden administration, very positively … The American government and the UK Government are as committed as the Australian government to this project and see that there is a pathway forward on how we will go about procuring these submarines.

The industrial base for all of the three countries – Australia included - is critical to achieving those outcomes and making sure that we’re able to grow the pie by bringing the Australian industrial base into those existing industrial bases is very important.

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Obscure Indonesia-linked investor circles UK’s Britishvolt with £160m deal

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Talks on rescue deal for battery startup led by DeaLab, which has been involved in fossil fuel transactions

The battery startup Britishvolt is in talks with an Indonesia-linked oil and gas investor for a £160m rescue deal that would almost wipe out the value of existing shareholders’ stakes.

The investor consortium is led by DeaLab Group, a UK-based private equity investor that has been involved in several fossil fuel and renewable energy transactions in Indonesia, and an associated metals business, Barracuda Group.

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Banks and countries pledge $10bn to rebuild Pakistan after catastrophic floods

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International funders join Pakistan PM and UN secretary general in Geneva to agree recovery plan following ‘monsoon on steroids’

The international community has promised $10.5bn (£8.77bn) to help Pakistan rebuild after last summer’s catastrophic floods, described by UN secretary general António Guterres as a “monsoon on steroids.”

The pledges were made on Monday at the International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan in Geneva, Switzerland, hosted by Pakistan’s prime minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif and Guterres.

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Kimberley floods may have left hundreds homeless in region with longstanding housing crisis

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An estimated 100 homes are feared uninhabitable in WA communities where it’s not uncommon to have up to 20 people living in a house

Massive flooding in Western Australia may have left hundreds of people homeless, bringing the region’s pre-existing overcrowding crisis into sharp relief, local residents say.

An estimated 100 homes across the Kimberley were feared uninhabitable in the wake of ex-tropical cyclone Ellie, according to Tyronne Garstone, the chief executive of Kimberley Land Council, the peak Indigenous body in the Kimberley region. And with many people in the area living in multigenerational homes or with extended family, the extent of potential homelessness is immense, he said.

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Australia’s big polluters must cut emissions by nearly 5% a year, but can use offsets to get there

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Plan that is key to Albanese government’s 2030 target will focus on emissions intensity to encourage cleaner practices rather than cutting production

Australia’s big polluting sites will have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 5% a year but will face no limits on the use of carbon offsets under the Albanese government’s plan to deal with industrial emitters.

The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, on Tuesday released the government’s plan to revamp the safeguard mechanism, a Coalition policy that was promised to limit emissions from more than 200 industrial facilities, but in practice has failed.

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Concerns over use of ‘cheap and easy’ offsets – as it happened

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More than 80% of council areas declared disasters in the past four years, Watt says

Murray Watt was hesitant to attribute the individual disaster in the Kimberley to climate change, unlike his colleague Chris Bowen. But he said the overall pattern of increasing disasters was “undoubtedly climate change”:

I don’t think that you can point to one particular event and say it’s due to climate change, but there is no doubt that we are seeing before our eyes is climate change happening. We know from all the scientists that we’re going to be facing more of these intense events more frequently.

I was actually advised yesterday by our agency that just in the last 12 months we’ve seen 316 of Australia’s 537 council areas disaster-declared: that’s about 60% of the council areas in the country. And if you go back four years to the black summer, 438 council areas in Australia have been disaster-declared, which is over 80%.

A lot of people aren’t aware but the wet season in northern Western Australia … generally doesn’t begin until later this month. So their wettest months actually tend to be February and March rather than starting as early as January. So to have this amount of water come through the system this early in the wet season is a concern.

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France’s refusal to ban Sunday hunting angers anti-hunt campaigners

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Tougher sentences to be imposed for those causing accidents but activists dismiss alcohol ban as ‘laughable’

The French government has angered anti-hunt campaigners after refusing to ban hunting on Sundays during the season.

Instead, it has declared a ban on drinking alcohol and taking drugs while hunting, a move activists say is unenforceable, and will set up a voluntary application for hunters to indicate where they are active.

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Engineers to assess flood-damaged bridges on key WA route amid concerns some could take years to fix

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Fitzroy River Bridge among those apparently collapsed after record flooding in state’s north destroys roads and isolates communities

Engineers will assess the destruction of major bridges on the trucking route connecting Western Australia and the Northern Territory on Wednesday amid concerns key infrastructure could could take months, or even years, to fix.

Main Roads WA and structural engineers will assess the Fitzroy River Bridge on the Great Northern Highway, as photos and videos emerge showing that the bridge has collapsed after being hit with record floods.

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Defence personnel deployed to aid flooding recovery – as it happened

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Voice leaders ‘tired of political games’

A leading Indigenous voice to parliament advocate has lashed the “tired political games” marring discussion around the proposed advisory body, AAP reports.

Constitutions are for principle. The machinery is for parliament. The High Court of Australia was recognised in 1901 and set up via legislation several years later … it’s a normal constitutional approach.

The Uluru Statement was issued to the Australian people because as Australians we are tired of political games. This isn’t about politicians and politicking, this is about the Australian people and our future.

You can’t just say to the Australian public as the prime minister, ‘you vote at an election … on a Saturday and we’ll give you the detail on the Monday’. It’s a very serious decision to change our constitution.

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Smells like dead rats: crowds flock to catch a whiff of blooming corpse flower in Adelaide

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Titan arum emits a foul smell to lure pollinators, but at the botanic gardens it attracts thousands of visitors to witness the rare flowering

A corpse flower, which emits a stench that can travel for kilometres to lure flesh flies, sweat bees and carrion beetles, has just bloomed in the Adelaide Botanic gardens.

It only blooms once every few years, and only for about 48 hours, to attract insects that have already wallowed in the pollen of another corpse flower.

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‘A roaring fireplace’: the polluting raffle prize promoted by the British Heart Foundation

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Research charity’s bid to raise money through a scheme that goes against its own principles sparks wrath of clean air campaigners

The British Heart Foundation (BHF), which has campaigned on the pollution risks of burning wood at home, is being urged to review a charity draw for a £3m London townhouse, with a fire pit on the garden terrace and open fires in the property.

A promotional video shows wood being burned in the metal fire pit at the property in north London and an open fire next to a bath. “Take a soak in your sumptuous stone tub and relax to the crackling sounds of the roaring fireplace,” says the promotion.

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