Category Archives: Environment

Britain still failing on climate crisis, warn advisers

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Committee urges that companies must meet green standards to qualify for Covid-19 corporate bailouts

Ministers are bracing themselves for a powerful new rebuke from the government’s own advisers over the nation’s inadequate response to the climate crisis. In its annual progress report, to be published on Thursday, the Committee on Climate Change will lambast continuing failures by the government to tackle the issues of overheating homes, flash floods, loss of biodiversity and the other threats posed as our planet continues to overheat dangerously.

Last year, the committee complained that no areas of the UK’s response to the climate crisis were being tackled properly. “The whole thing is run by the government like a Dad’s Army,” said the committee’s chairman, Lord Deben.

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Italian team covers glacier with giant white sheets to slow melting

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Every summer, the Presena glacier in northern Italy is protected from the sun with huge reflective tarps

A vast tarpaulin unravels, gathering speed as it bounces down the glacier over glinting snow. Summer is here and the alpine ice is being protected from global warming.

In northern Italy, the Presena glacier has lost more than one third of its volume since 1993.

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Anti-HS2 protesters begin 125-mile walk along proposed route

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Protest walk organised by Extinction Rebellion began in Birmingham and will stop off at protest sites on way to London

Eighty anti-HS2 protesters have started a 125-mile “Rebel Trail” along the route of the controversial HS2 high-speed rail link to highlight the damage they say it will do to wildlife and woodland.

The aim of the protest walk, organised by Extinction Rebellion, is to try to persuade the government to halt the high-speed link. The walkers will travel through countryside, villages and local communities along phase one of the HS2 route to show solidarity with those opposed to the rail link and say the peaceful demonstration will raise awareness about the environmental damage they say HS2 will cause.

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Texas’s cactus cops battle to save rare desert beauty from smuggling gangs

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Agents on US-Mexico border seize thousands of plants illegally pulled out of the ground by criminals

Special agents in America have busted a smuggling ring on the US-Mexico border, but their haul is not drugs or the immigrants that President Donald Trump rails against with his “big beautiful wall”.

These smugglers were trafficking something all together less high profile – so-called “living rock cactus” that grows uniquely on the arid plains of Big Bend national park in Texas.

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‘Tipping point’: Greta Thunberg hails Black Lives Matter protests

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People are realising ‘we cannot keep looking away from these things’, says climate activist

Greta Thunberg has said the Black Lives Matter protests show society has reached a tipping point where injustice can no longer be ignored, but that she believes a “green recovery plan” from the coronavirus pandemic will not be enough to solve the climate crisis.

Reflecting on the protests that have swept the globe in recent weeks, the Swedish climate activist told the BBC: “It feels like we have passed some kind of social tipping point where people are starting to realise that we cannot keep looking away from these things. We cannot keep sweeping these things under the carpet, these injustices.

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Climate crisis threatens future of global sport, says report

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Study says heatwaves, fires and floods, and rising sea levels pose major threat over coming years

The rapidly accelerating climate crisis threatens the future of major sports events around the world, according to a report that also says the global sporting industry is failing to tackle its own emissions.

The study found that in the coming years nearly all sports – from cricket to American football, tennis to athletics, surfing to golf – will face serious disruption from heatwaves, fires, floods and rising sea levels.

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As UK lockdowns ease, fears grow of return to pre-pandemic crime and pollution levels

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Carbon emissions, crime and air pollution all fell but are now starting to rebound

In a sudden realisation of what climate campaigners have been urging for years, flights were cancelled, vehicle use plummeted and the oil industry found itself in turmoil as lockdown restrictions took hold.

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‘A shame for the world’: Uganda’s fragile forest ecosystem destroyed for sugar

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Conservationists say clearance of Bugamo reserve for plantation is blow to biodiversity and country’s reputation on wildlife

Conservationists have branded a decision by the Ugandan high court to allow swathes of forest to be cleared for a sugarcane plantation “an unforgivable shame for all people”.

Work to clear 900 hectares (2,223 acres) of Bugoma Forest Reserve, in Hoima, began last month after the court ruled that the land, leased by Hoima Sugar Company Ltd, lay outside the protected area of the forest. The court ordered the National Forestry Authority (NFA), which manages it, to vacate the land and remove the military officers who had been guarding it. The NFA has appealed the decision.

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Papua New Guinea chiefs call for halt to plan for country’s largest ever mine

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Locals say the Sepik river region must be protected from ‘exploitation and destruction from outsiders’

Chiefs from 28 haus tambarans – “spirit houses” – representing 78,000 people along Papua New Guinea’s remote Sepik river have formally declared they want a proposal for the country’s largest ever mine halted.

PanAust, an Australian-registered miner ultimately owned by the Chinese state-owned Guangdong Rising Assets Management, has proposed building a gold, silver and copper mine on the Frieda river, a tributary to the Sepik.

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Climate crisis: alarm at record-breaking heatwave in Siberia

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Unusually high temperatures in region linked to wildfires, oil spill and moth swarms

A prolonged heatwave in Siberia is “undoubtedly alarming”, climate scientists have said. The freak temperatures have been linked to wildfires, a huge oil spill and a plague of tree-eating moths.

On a global scale, the Siberian heat is helping push the world towards its hottest year on record in 2020, despite a temporary dip in carbon emissions owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Pandemics result from destruction of nature, say UN and WHO

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Experts call for legislation and trade deals worldwide to encourage green recovery

Pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature, according to leaders at the UN, WHO and WWF International, and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.

The illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade as well as the devastation of forests and other wild places were still the driving forces behind the increasing number of diseases leaping from wildlife to humans, the leaders told the Guardian.

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Divers in Thailand attempt to free whale shark entangled in rope – video

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A group of divers in Thailand tried to save a whale shark whose tail was tied by rope. Video filmed on Saturday shows the whale shark swimming with a nylon rope tied around its tail. 

But the knife was too small and could not cut through the rope. Injured and with a rope still tied to its tail, the whale shark eventually swam away


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Plastic superhighway: the awful truth of our hidden ocean waste

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Solving the issue of waste in our seas turned out to be more complex than scrounging for bottles off the beach, Laura Trethewey found

We called the competition Who Found the Weirdest Thing? So far, the entries that day were a motorcycle helmet, a lithium battery covered with scary stickers asking that we return it to the military, and a toy dinosaur.

The dinosaur was warm from the sun and starting to degrade. The ocean had smoothed and worn down its edges. Rocks and sand had crosshatched its skin. It was missing a hind leg. On one side it was dark grey; the sun had bleached its opposite flank white.

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Coronavirus: UK has legal duty to review air pollution targets, say lawyers

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Letter cites growing evidence of link between dirty air and Covid-19 infections and deaths

Growing evidence of a link between air pollution and the impact of coronavirus means the government has a legal obligation to urgently review its air quality strategy, according to lawyers.

In a letter to ministers, the lawyers argue that refusing to order a review would breach UK law, the precautionary principle and the European convention on human rights.

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Deadly heat is killing Americans: climate death toll rises after a decade of federal inaction

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Heat now causes more deaths than hurricanes, tornadoes or floods in most years, creating a new public health threat. An investigation reveals why the CDC’s prevention efforts have faltered

This story is co-published with Columbia Journalism Investigations, the Center for Public Integrity and Covering Climate Now. Read the full investigation here.

Charlie Rhodes lived alone on a tree-sparse street with sunburned lawns just outside Phoenix, Arizona. At 61, the army veteran’s main connection to the world was Facebook; often, he posted several times a day. But as a heatwave blanketed the region in June 2016 – leading to temperatures among the highest ever recorded – his posts stopped. Three weeks later, a pile of unopened mail outside his door prompted a call to police.

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Diego the tortoise, father to hundreds and saviour of his species, finally retires

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Giant tortoise, whose reproductive efforts almost single-handedly saved his species, has been moved to an uninhabited island

Diego, the giant Galápagos tortoise whose tireless efforts are credited with almost single-handedly saving his once-threatened species, has been put out to pasture on his native island after decades of breeding in captivity, Ecuador’s environment minister said.

Diego was shipped out from the Galápagos national park’s breeding program on Santa Cruz to the remote and uninhabited Española.

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National Trust buys romantic landscape of Lorna Doone novel

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Nine acres in Exmoor includes buildings, rivers and moorland linked to 19th-century tale

It is a place of wooded valleys, tumbling rivers and rugged moorland that was immortalised in the 19th-century novel Lorna Doone, a twisty tale of romance, murder and outlaws by RD Blackmore.

The National Trust announced on Tuesday it had bought nine acres of land in Doone country, including farmhouses and cottages, and is hoping to encourage more visitors to explore this tucked-away area of Exmoor.

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Emissions from 13 dairy firms match those of entire UK, says report

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Exclusive: Milk giants’ climate impact rising and production caps needed, say researchers

The biggest dairy companies in the world have the same combined greenhouse gas emissions as the UK, the sixth biggest economy in the world, according to a new report.

The analysis shows the impact of the 13 firms on the climate crisis is growing, with an 11% increase in emissions in the two years after the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, largely due to consolidation in the sector. Scientific reports have shown that consumption of dairy, as well as meat, must be reduced significantly in rich nations to tackle the climate emergency.

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Lords seek to allow gene-editing in UK ‘to produce healthy, hardier crops’

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Changes could introduce gluten-free wheat and disease-resistant fruit and vegetables, say peers


Peers are preparing plans to legalise the gene-editing of crops in England, a move that scientists say would offer the nation a chance to develop and grow hardier, more nutritious varieties. The legislation would also open the door to gene-editing of animals.

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Climate worst-case scenarios may not go far enough, cloud data shows

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Modelling suggests climate is considerably more sensitive to carbon emissions than thought

Worst-case global heating scenarios may need to be revised upwards in light of a better understanding of the role of clouds, scientists have said.

Recent modelling data suggests the climate is considerably more sensitive to carbon emissions than previously believed, and experts said the projections had the potential to be “incredibly alarming”, though they stressed further research would be needed to validate the new numbers.

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