Category Archives: Environment

UK-backed battery firm Britishvolt considers entering administration

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Company struggling to find investors willing to fund effort to build giant £3.8bn ‘gigafactory’ in north-east

The UK government-backed battery startup Britishvolt is on the brink of entering administration with the potential loss of almost 300 jobs, after it struggled to find investors willing to fund its effort to build a giant £3.8bn “gigafactory” in north-east England.

The company had considered an administration as early as Monday, two sources with knowledge of Britishvolt’s operations told the Guardian. Britishvolt has lined up the accountancy firm EY to carry out the administration if it goes ahead.

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Nothing will change on climate until death toll rises in west, says Gabonese minister

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Before Cop27, Lee White also says broken promises on funding leave sense of betrayal

The world will only take meaningful action on the climate crisis once people in rich countries start dying in greater numbers from its effects, Gabon’s environment minister has said, while warning that broken promises on billions of dollars of adaptation finance have left a “sense of betrayal” before Cop27.

Lee White said governments were not yet behaving as if global heating was a crisis, and he feared for the future he was leaving to his children. He said the $100bn of promised climate finance from rich nations was not reaching poor countries, which was driving distrust in the UN climate process.

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Indian states ban guns and airguns to safeguard Amur falcons

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Assam, Nagaland and Manipur officials also confiscate catapults and nets to ensure birds can recuperate

Officials in north-east India have banned the use of guns and airguns and confiscated catapults and nets in an effort to safeguard the small Amur falcons that make an autumn pit stop on their way to sunny South Africa.

Forest officers were patrolling areas of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur states to make sure no one disturbs the long-distance travelling raptors who stop briefly in India.

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Cop27 protesters will be corralled in desert away from climate conference

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Visitors to Sharm el-Sheikh also face extensive searches and video surveillance in taxis

Across Sharm el-Sheikh, a slim strip of manicured resorts, asphalt and concrete near the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula, teams of workers are putting the finishing touches to preparations for the UN’s Cop27 climate conference.

Sparkling new buses are ready to drive down the enlarged highways that cut across desert landscape, flanked by smooth shiny new walkways adorned with angular sculptural arches. A field of glittering solar panels run by a company with ties to the Egyptian military will be online in time for the conference, as well as a new shopping mall.

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Weather tracker: Storm Nalgae heads towards China after pelting Philippines

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Sixteenth tropical cyclone to affect the Philippines this season caused deadly floods and landslides

Tropical Storm Nalgae swept through the Philippines on Saturday with sustained winds of 60mph.

Heavy rain caused the most damage, with significant flooding and landslides. Dozens of people have died and 170,000 sought shelter in evacuation centres.

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NSW plastic straw ban: how will it work and what will be gained from it?

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Single-use plastic straws, cutlery and cotton buds will be among items banned from Tuesday

Single-use plastic straws and other items will be banned in New South Wales on Tuesday. The decision follows similar action to ban single-use plastic bags earlier this year.

We take a look at what this means for customers and businesses, and how it will be enforced.

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Global anger at Sunak’s Cop27 snub that raises fears over UK’s climate crisis stance

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PM accused of ‘washing his hands’ of leadership on international climate action with decision not to attend talks

Rishi Sunak’s decision to snub the Cop27 UN climate talks, and to keep King Charles from attending, has angered and upset countries around the world, risking the UK’s standing on the world stage and raising concerns over his government’s commitment to tackling the climate crisis.

Several developing countries told the Guardian of their dismay. Carlos Fuller, Belize’s ambassador to the UN, said: “I can understand why the king was asked not to attend – keeping him out of the fray. However, as the principal UK policymaker and the Cop26 president, the PM should have led the summit.

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Eight-year-old boy becomes youngest person to ascend Yosemite’s El Capitan

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Sam Adventure Baker went up the cliff with his father, but some climbers say method known as ‘jugging’ is not true climbing

An eight-year-old boy has become the youngest person to ascend the terrifying sheer rock wall of El Capitan in America’s Yosemite national park, his father said in a Facebook post.

Sam Adventure Baker has been going up the huge cliff with his father since Tuesday. The duo are part of a four-person team, where one person climbs ahead and sets the ropes for others to follow. Nights are spent sleeping on the rock face.

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AFP foil plan to import $1.6bn of liquid meth in coconut water bottles – as it happened

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People have been cleared to return to their homes as flood threat eases in Victoria, but the Bureau of Meteorology is warning of renewed flooding in parts of NSW. This blog is now closed

Chalmers on the size of government debt and making it ‘sustainable’

The treasurer is asked whether the government will consider rethinking taxes like GST and PRRT.

We have already found $22bn in savings, $28.5bn in budget improvements overall. We kept real spending growth flat across the forward estimates. We have got the debt down over the forward estimates. We have let 99% of the temporary revenue surge from higher commodity prices flow through to the budget.

That is good progress when we have shown in doing that … you can move sensibly on all fronts, restraint, trimming spending, sensible tax reform, you can make the budget more sustainable and that will be the task of the two or three budgets remaining in this parliamentary term as well.

We need to work out how do we maintain a focus on Australians with a disability and their families, how do we put them front and centre, and at the same time make sure that spending on the NDIS is sustainable and important part of that is making sure we get value for money for every dollar that is spent in what is a really important, really, really important service that we provide to Australians.

I do understand there is a substantial part of the community that would prefer that that PRRT take was higher.

We haven’t been working up an option to do that to change the PRRT arrangements but the treasury has been commissioned by my predecessor and by his predecessor to do some of this work around the taxing point in the PRRT.

We do want to make sure Australians get a good return for their resources. We need to balance that against the investment that’s been made into the sector. When I get that advice from I will engage in it a meaningful way and I will listen to it.

We have seen I think as you acknowledged in your first question, on this topic, company taxes are up quite substantially. That’s a good thing and we have let that flow through to the budget. The PRRT, there’s a modest increase. I will wait to see what the treasury advises us on the conclusion of the review that my two predecessors put in place.

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Thin fish, small catches: can Japan’s sushi culture survive climate crisis?

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Global heating is warming waters, changing salmon and tuna migration – and hurting fisheries

There is little at Shiogama seafood market to suggest that Japanese consumers could one day be deprived of their favourite seafood – from giant crab’s legs simmering in a winter nabe hotpot to spheres of salmon roe resting on a bed of rice wrapped in nori seaweed.

Stalls heave with huge sides of bluefin tuna, expertly transformed into more manageable portions by knife-wielding workers, while early-morning shoppers pause to inspect boxes of squid, flounder and sea pineapples landed only hours earlier.

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No 10 alarm as Boris Johnson plans to attend Cop27 climate summit

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Ex-PM’s Cop27 visit is seen as snub to Rishi Sunak as Labour attacks government’s policy failures on environmental crisis

A row over prime minister Rishi Sunak’s refusal to attend the Cop27 climate summit took an extraordinary twist on Saturday night as the Observer was informed that his predecessor but one – Boris Johnson – is planning to attend the event.

Several sources said they had been told that Johnson is intending to go to the crucial meeting of world leaders in Egypt to show his solidarity with the battle against the climate crisis.

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New York still vulnerable 10 years after Hurricane Sandy, protesters warn

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Storm in 2012 had devastating impact on US’s biggest city but insufficient government action risks a repeat, demonstrators say

In marking the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Sandy smashing into New York City, campaigners are warning that insufficient action by governments to tackle the climate crisis risks a repeat of such damaging and increasingly fierce storms.

Sandy made landfall with a huge impact on the New Jersey shore on 29 October 2012, before taking an unusual and destructive path into New York causing death, flooding and extended mass power cuts.

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Brazil election goes to the wire after ill-tempered final TV debate

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Veteran leftist Lula da Silva holds slender poll lead over Jair Bolsonaro as national divide grows before Sunday vote

The two political heavyweights vying to become Brazil’s next president have locked horns during the final television debate before a momentous election with profound implications for the Amazon rainforest, the global climate emergency and the future of one of the world’s largest democracies.

The former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro faced off in Rio at the studios of Brazil’s biggest broadcaster, with eve of election polls giving Lula a slender but not unassailable lead.

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Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira remembered in Lancaster exhibition

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Exhibition at Halton Mill is part of a month of activities about the Amazon commemorating Phillips and Pereira

An exhibition in memory of the murdered Guardian journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira opens on Sunday ahead of an international conference on saving the Amazon rainforest which is being held next month.

The two men were killed in Brazilian Amazonia in June 2022 while researching a book Phillips was writing called How to Save the Amazon.

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Goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C ‘more fragile’ than ever, says Cop27 chair

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Exclusive: in a rare interview, Egyptian minister Sameh Shoukry says global tensions are making talks harder

• Windfall tax must change in face of ‘excessive’ oil profits – Cop26 chief

The goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C is “more fragile” than ever, as world leaders prepare to meet for crucial climate talks, the president-designate of the negotiations has warned.

Sameh Shoukry, the foreign minister of Egypt, who will chair the UN Cop27 climate summit next month, said in a rare interview that forging agreement would be harder than at any other recent climate talks, owing to the “turbulent” global economy and “difficult” geopolitical tensions, stoked by the Ukraine war.

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Britain’s grasslands and dormice under threat from mild autumn

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October’s summery temperatures are ‘confusing’ plants and throwing off fragile ecosystems

Britain’s rare chalk grasslands and dormice are under threat from the mild weather this autumn, and some plants are “confused” and have flowered multiple times, experts have said.

This October, the UK has experienced temperatures more normal for spring or summer, with highs of 19.5C recorded this week, and more warm weather forecast for coming days.

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Aboriginal cultural heritage protected as NSW rejects Glendell coalmine expansion

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Wonnarua people want Ravensworth Homestead added to the state heritage register and to become a site of reconciliation

The New South Wales independent planning commission has for the first time ruled against a coalmine extension in Singleton.

Scott Franks and Robert Lester, representatives of the Plains Clans of the Wonnarua People (PCWP), learned this week that priceless Wonnarua cultural heritage in the Upper Hunter region – centred on the Ravensworth Homestead – would be protected because the planning commission had denied Glencore’s Glendell coalmine expansion.

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Sophie Nicholls is a freelance writer based in the Hunter Valley

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Parks director should be accountable for ‘offence’ to Kakadu sacred site, protection authority says

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AAPA seeks leave to appeal against NT supreme court decision that found director is exempt from prosecution under state’s laws

A fight to hold Parks Australia to account over a walking track built through a sacred site in the Kakadu national park could be heading to the high court after a lower court found a Northern Territory law did not apply to the federal organisation.

The Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority (AAPA) has sought leave to appeal against a decision by the NT supreme court in September which found the director of Parks Australia was exempt from prosecution under the NT Aboriginal Sacred Sites Act.

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Shrew-like creature was placental mammals’ last common ancestor

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Group’s earliest primogenitor was probably a diminutive creature with a long snout, researchers suggest

The last common ancestor of today’s placental mammals – a group that includes humans, whales and armadillos – was probably a shrew-like creature with a long snout, researchers have revealed.

The forerunners of mammals are believed to have split from what eventually became reptiles around 320m years ago, but it was not until some time between 70 and 80m years ago that placental mammals arose.

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Climate crisis fuelling unseasonably warm October in UK and Europe, say experts

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Temperatures expected to hit 20C in UK, Germany and France this weekend

Three months ago, Britain experienced its hottest day on record. Records were similarly broken in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands as an extreme heatwave swept across much of Europe.

Now, with much of western Europe experiencing unusually mild autumnal temperatures caused by the jet stream – strong winds blowing from west to east – figures are expected to reach 20C this weekend in parts of Britain, Germany, France and elsewhere, according to national weather services.

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