Category Archives: Environment

Germany delays exit from nuclear power to offset energy shortfall

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Two nuclear plants’ lives extended as country copes with loss of Russian gas and shortage of French electricity

Germany’s planned exit from nuclear power by the end of this year has been officially delayed in order to shore up energy supplies during an expected shortfall this winter, the economic minister, Robert Habeck, announced on Tuesday.

The decision follows a shortage in supplies of electricity coming from France due to the fact that more than half of its nuclear power stations are offline, Habeck told journalists in Berlin.

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Great British Energy: what is it, what would it do and how would it be funded?

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The details behind Keir Starmer’s proposed publicly owned energy company when Labour take power

The key pledge of Keir Starmer’s Labour conference speech was the proposed launch of Great British Energy, a publicly owned energy company to invest in clean UK power as part of the party’s commitment to “fight the Tories on economic growth”. But how does it work, and is it the same as renationalising energy?

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Australia urged to adopt 75% emissions reduction target by 2035 if it is to reach net zero

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Investor Group on Climate Change says clear price on carbon needed and removal of all fossil fuel subsidies by 2050

Australia needs an ambitious 75% emissions reduction target by 2035, a clear price on carbon, and to remove all fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 in order to unlock the investment needed to reach net zero by 2050, according to a new report.

The Investor Group on Climate Change has released its policy priorities report for 2022-2025, outlining key areas for reform that would align Australia’s emissions target to the Paris goal of limiting warming to 1.5C and ensure the country was able to manage an “orderly” retreat from coal.

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NSW convenes first meeting of disaster taskforce ahead of more wet weather

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Task Force Hawk formed to address issues raised in an independent inquiry into floods earlier this year

Emergency agencies will brief a New South Wales government taskforce set up to improve the state’s response to disasters on Wednesday as residents brace for more wet weather in the third consecutive La Niña.

The meeting will be the first for Task Force Hawk – the newly formed permanent crisis committee of cabinet ministers and officials from the state’s emergency management agencies to learn from mistakes made during the February and March floods.

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Keir Starmer promises to launch publicly-owned UK energy company as he hails ‘Labour moment’ – UK politics live

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Latest updates: the Labour party leader used his conference speech to spell out his plan for the UK

The decision to pay Liz Truss’s new chief of staff, Mark Fullbrook, through a private company has been dropped after criticism from within the Conservatives as well as from opposition parties.

The government admitted over the weekend that Fullbrook would be paid through his lobbying firm, a move that could have helped him avoid paying tax. He had previously claimed the firm had stopped all commercial activities.

The world we are heading for is a bumpy few weeks. The chancellor is now going to have quite a tough time because he has now set out plans to balance the books in November. That is going to be very hard.

Actually balancing the books in November is going to be harder than it would have been to show you are balancing the books last week because higher interest rates will make it harder to do. You might need £15bn worth of tough choices now that you didn’t need last Friday.

In the end, lower taxes will mean worse public services, or other people’s taxes having to go up, and it is those choices and ducking those choices that markets are looking at and saying that is not what serious policymaking looks like.

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Slug numbers appear to shrivel after UK heatwave

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Zoologists say they have never seen this low a number, after unprecedented hot weather

As dewy dawns break across the UK’s pumpkin patches and allotments, gardeners across the land are waking up to the absence of at least one slippery pest. Slug numbers appear to have shrivelled as a result of the ongoing drought.

“I went to survey a woodland site last week and it took me over 30 minutes to locate a slug. Usually, I would expect to find them under almost every log in that habitat,” said Jake Stone, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge. “I thought that there would be fewer around, but I’ve never seen this low a number. But I suppose that’s to be expected, because it’s rarely been this hot and dry.”

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Weak controls failing to stop illegal seafood landing on EU plates, investigation shows

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EU financial watchdog blames small fines and feeble controls in some states for amount of illegal seafood


Illegally fished seafood continues to end up on the plates of EU citizens due to weak controls and insignificant fines in some member states, auditors have found.

The European Union, the world’s largest importer of fishery products, requires member states to take action against fishing vessels and EU nationals engaged in illegal fishing activities anywhere in the world.

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Climate complacency has left firefighters ill-prepared, says union chief

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Matt Wrack of Fire Brigades Union says ‘historic cuts’ have angered and demoralised his members

A “horrible complacency” about the impact of the climate emergency on the fire service has left it under-funded and ill-prepared, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union has warned.

Matt Wrack said firefighters were at the sharp end of tackling the impact of climate change and warned that this summer’s wildfires had to act as a “wake-up call” to the UK government to engage with those on the frontline.

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‘It’s a murder scene’: feral pigs torment residents in New Zealand capital

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Farm just minutes from centre of Wellington estimates it has lost about 60 kid goats in past few months

Marauding feral pigs have blighted a central suburb in New Zealand’s capital, killing kid goats at an urban farm, intimidating dogs and turning up in residents’ gardens.

The owners of a goat milk farm in the hills of the suburb of Brooklyn, 10 minutes from the centre of Wellington, has lost about 60 kid goats to pigs in the past few months. Often, all that is left of them are gnawed bone fragments and parts of the hooves or head.

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Weather tracker: how did Hurricane Fiona maintain intensity so far north?

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Tropical systems often strengthen in warmer areas of Atlantic, but can also intensify elsewhere in certain conditions

Late last week, Canada’s Atlantic coast was hit by Hurricane Fiona, with maximum sustained winds in the region of 90mph (145km/h). Hurricanes rarely maintain such an intensity that far north. Why? Hurricanes are fuelled by high sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and ideally high sea temperatures over a large depth. As you move away from the tropics, SSTs typically reduce.

But hurricanes are not confined to the warmer areas of the Atlantic, such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Tropical systems often strengthen in these regions, but can sometimes sustain or even strengthen elsewhere given favourable conditions. Ocean currents can transport warmer water poleward which can produce regions at higher latitudes that have higher SSTs than their surroundings. Tropical systems that track northwards over warmer seas can maintain intensity or even strengthen, such as happened with Hurricane Fiona.

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Sudden die-off of endangered sturgeon alarms Canadian biologists

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The deaths within days of 11 sturgeon, a species unchanged for thousands of years, have puzzled scientists

When the first spindly, armour-clad carcass was spotted in the fast-flowing Nechako River in early September, Nikolaus Gantner and two colleagues scrambled out on a jet boat, braving strong currents to investigate the grim discovery.

Days later, the remains of 10 others were spotted floating along a 100km stretch of the river in western Canada.

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Turtle concern: Australian businessman denies threatening to sell Conflict Islands to China

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Ian Gowrie-Smith says he was frustrated the Australian government did not respond to urgent funding request for turtle conservation

The owner of 21 tropical islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea says he never threatened to sell them to China and his main aim is to save the turtles that nest there.

Ian Gowrie-Smith, an Australian businessman and investor, bought the Conflict Islands, which lie less than 1,000km from the Australian coast, almost two decades ago.

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Keir Starmer unveils green growth plan to counter Liz Truss’s tax cuts

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Labour pledges a revolution in green energy to ‘boost jobs and slash emissions’

Keir Starmer will pledge to deliver a new era of economic growth and permanently lower energy bills by turning the UK into an independent green “superpower” before 2030, through a massive expansion of wind and solar energy.

Announcing details of the plan exclusively to the Observer, the Labour leader says he will double the amount of onshore wind, triple solar and more than quadruple offshore wind power, “re-industrialising” the country to create a zero carbon, self-sufficient electricity system, by the end of this decade.

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Time is running out on the Murray-Darling plan. Should Tanya Plibersek reach for the big guns?

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NSW and Victoria have dragged their heels and now risk the federal government taking over Australia’s most important river system

State governments which have dragged their heels on delivering on their commitments under the Murray-Darling Basin plan are now risking a federal government takeover of water policy after June 2024.

They must judge whether the federal water minister, Tanya Plibersek, will be prepared to reach for the cudgels that are built into the Murray-Darling Basin plan and take over administration of Australia’s most important river system.

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Buzz stops: bus shelter roofs turned into gardens for bees and butterflies

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Bee bus stops first appeared in the Dutch city of Utrecht. Now the UK is planning for more than 1,000 and there is growing interest across Europe and in Canada and Australia

Butterflies and bees are getting their own transport network as “bee bus stops” start to pop up around UK cities and across Europe. Humble bus shelter roofs are being turned into riots of colour, with the number of miniature gardens – full of pollinator-friendly flora such as wild strawberries, poppies and pansies – set to increase by 50% in the UK by the end of this year.

Leicester is leading the charge with 30 bee bus stops installed since 2021. Derby has 18, and there are others in Southhampton, Newcastle, Sunderland, Derby, Oxford, Cardiff and Glasgow. Brighton council installed one last year after a petition was signed by almost 50,000 people.

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Five-year-old boy dies after car washed away in flood waters in NSW’s central west

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Emergency services rescued four people clinging to trees after two vehicles became trapped in floods

A five-year-old boy has died after the vehicle he was travelling in was washed away in flood waters in New South Wales’ central west.

Two vehicles became trapped in flood waters on the McGrane Way at Tullamore, north-west of Parkes on Friday night.

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Weather tracker: storms batter Alaska, Caribbean and Japan

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Hurricane causes blackout across Puerto Rico while typhoon forces 8m to flee homes in Japan

It has been very active across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in recent days with more than five storms officially named.

Hurricane Fiona in the Caribbean was the first storm of the tropical Atlantic season to strengthen into a major hurricane. Fiona made landfall on Sunday across south-western Puerto Rico, where it dumped 762mm (30in) of rain with sustained gusts of 115mph.

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Tintagel among castles at risk unless England can hold back the tide

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English Heritage identifies six most vulnerable sites as climate change intensifies coastal erosion

The wonderful wildness of the spot, a rocky Cornish headland pounded relentlessly by Atlantic breakers, has inspired poets, artists and dreamers for many a century.

But Tintagel, immortalised in British mythology as the place of King Arthur’s conception, is one of a string of castles at risk of tumbling into the sea as climate change increases the pace of coastal erosion.

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Tory MPs angrily challenge Rees-Mogg’s fracking revival plan

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Energy secretary considers bypassing local planning rules as backbenchers voice opposition

Ministers face a furious backlash from Conservative MPs after overturning a manifesto pledge to pause fracking until it is proved safe, and then indicating drilling could be imposed without local support.

Outlining a return to shale gas extraction in England after three years, Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed worries about earthquakes caused by the practice as “hysteria”, claiming this was often down to a lack of scientific understanding.

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ACT urges Tanya Plibersek to quash defence housing plan that would destroy critically endangered grasslands

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Defence Housing Australia wants to clear nearly 16 hectares of natural temperate grassland in Canberra’s north-west

The ACT government has urged the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, to reject a defence housing development that would destroy critically endangered grasslands in Canberra’s north-west.

Defence Housing Australia (DHA) has proposed building hundreds of houses on an old naval transmission site in the suburb of Lawson.

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