The Guardian

Oil and gas companies don’t just have a seat at the Cop table: they are in charge of the table

Earlier this month, the UN announced it will require fossil fuel lobbyists to identify themselves as such when registering for the Cop28 climate summit. The move was applauded by campaigners and politicians alike, but it’s a shockingly small first step towards matching the boldness demanded by UN secretary general, António Guterres, when it comes to rooting out fossil fuel influence. In a speech earlier this month, Guterres called for the phase out of fossil fuels themselves, and said oil majors must “cease and desist influence peddling and legal threats designed to knee-cap progress.”

The UN’s move to transparently label lobbyists at Cop28 looks a lot like damage control after recent embarrassing revelations, such as there having been more oil lobbyists than any one nation’s delegation at Cop26 in Glasgow. But to actually rid Cop of fossil fuel influence, the UN has to go far beyond finally unmasking industry lobbyists; it needs to hold up a mirror to its own enabling behaviour over the years, then reverse all of it.

Campaigners condemn pollution and shortages as government and regulator discuss possible bailout

Thames Water customers have called for an urgent inquiry into the company’s finances after children became seriously unwell from swimming in the river and homes were left without water during a drought.

Campaigners have expressed astonishment that the company may be bailed out by the taxpayer after it failed to invest appropriately in infrastructure to stop sewage spills and leaks.

Plans drawn up to pay for cost of dealing with sewage crisis and climate emergency

• Contingency plans being drawn up for Thames Water collapse
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Water companies are reportedly pushing for bills in England to rise by up to 40% under plans being drawn up to pay for the cost of dealing with the sewage crisis and the climate emergency.

The increases are due to be announced next year and could drive annual bills up from an average of £450 to £680 in parts of the country by the end of the decade, according to a Times report citing consultation documents.

As the climate crisis forces migration, so native tongues wither, too. But it’s not too late to intervene

Rising sea levels already pose an existential threat to the populations of Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and other low-lying Pacific atolls. In these places, however, it is not just homes, crops and community cohesiveness that are at risk: it is Tuvaluan, Kiribati and Marshallese – the languages native to these islands.

The impact of the climate crisis on languages may be new, but the relationship between language and climate is old. As humans populated the Earth, climate and geography were enormous factors in where they settled and flourished. The equatorial region, with its consistent temperatures, predictable rainfall and abundant agricultural opportunities, was particularly agreeable.

Drugmaker’s $4oom offsetting scheme aims to combat climate change and biodiversity loss caused by deforestation

The boss of Britain’s biggest drugmaker, Pascal Soriot, has warned that the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss are damaging the planet and human health, as it announced a $400m (£310m) plan to plant 200m trees by 2030.

The offsetting scheme is one of the biggest tree-planting programmes globally. In 2020, AstraZeneca pledged to plant and maintain more than 50m trees by the end of 2025, with 10.5m trees of 300 different species planted so far across Australia (in collaboration with Aboriginal people), Indonesia, Ghana, the UK, the US and France.

And that is why my life is NOT WORTH LIVING RIGHT NOW

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UK urged to use trade deals as bargaining tool to protect marine mammals

Dolphins and other marine mammals are being failed by the UK government, MPs have said, as they call for ministers not to sign trade deals without considering cetacean welfare.

The UK has poorer protections for dolphins, whales and seals than other countries, a report by the environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee has found.

Yes, Finland has nature and saunas in abundance. But more important is an attitude I’ve found lacking in the UK

When I was invited to take part in a masterclass in happiness on the shores of Finnish Lakeland, a few of my friends expressed their surprise. But, Lucy, said one, you’re one of the happiest people I know. What are you hoping to learn from the Finns? I suppose she had a point. I’ve always been one of those annoying, glass-half-full people – not the most obvious choice for a four-day trip designed to teach me why Finnish people are consistently rated the happiest in the world. But, ever the optimist, I gladly accepted.

We Britons have about 60 words for happiness: blissfulness, ecstasy, pleasure, delight … The list is as varied as it is surprising, given that we only just scraped into the top 20 happiest countries in the world this year. Finns, who have been named the happiest nation for the sixth year running, are either onnellinen or iloinen. The latter roughly translates as joyful or glad: you might be iloinen that you’re heading off on holiday. Onnellinen, on the other hand, speaks to the notion of being content with your life, rather than describing a fleeting feeling.

Lucy Pearson is a freelance writer, book blogger and host of The Bondi Literary salon

Report by RSPB, ELF and Friends of the Earth say even cases with good prospects of success are being abandoned

Prohibitively high costs are pricing individuals and community groups out of bringing legal challenges to protect the environment, major NGOs say.

A joint report by the RSPB, the Environmental Law Foundation (ELF) and Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland, says cases raising concerns about loss of green space, wildlife habitat and the climate crisis have been abandoned because of fears about costs, even when they have good prospects of success. It suggests the number of environmental judicial review applications may have halved in a decade.

Small island countries press for guarantees as rising sea levels risk leaving their citizens stateless

• ‘It’s absolutely guaranteed’: the best and worst case scenarios for sea level rise

Small island nations would rather fight than flee, but rising sea levels have prompted apocalyptic legal discussions about whether a state is still a state if its land disappears below the waves.

The Pacific Islands Forum, which represents many of the most vulnerable countries, has invited international legal experts to consider this question and begun a diplomatic campaign to ensure that political statehood continues even after a nation’s physical fabric is submerged.

Latest ‘heat dome’ event over Texas and Louisiana, plus much of Mexico, driven by human-cause climate change, scientists find

The record heatwave roiling parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mexico was made at least five times more likely due to human-caused climate change, scientists have found, marking the latest in a series of recent extreme “heat dome” events that have scorched various parts of the world.

A stubborn ridge of high pressure has settled over Mexico and a broad swath of the southern US over the past three weeks, pushing the heat index, a combination of temperature and humidity, to above 48C (120F) in some places.

An area of primary rainforest the size of Switzerland was felled last year suggesting world leaders’ commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 is failing

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show.

From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet’s most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries.

New species named Pinanga subterranea as Kew botanists admit they have no idea how its flowers are pollinated

A new-to-science palm species has been discovered in Borneo with the remarkable ability to flower and fruit underground. How the rare palm – named Pinanga subterranea – has survived is a mystery, as most plants have evolved to develop their flowers and fruit above ground to facilitate pollination and the dispersal of seeds.

“Pinanga subterranea is the only known species of palm to flower and fruit below ground,” said Dr Benedikt Kuhnhäuser, a future leader fellow at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who was part of the research team that collected specimens and ascertained that it was a new species. “Flowering and fruiting below ground is mind-boggling and seemingly paradoxical because they appear to prevent pollination and dispersal. We now know bearded pigs eat and disperse Pinanga subterranea’s fruits, but we’ve yet to find out how and by whom the flowers are pollinated.”

Research finds tropical mammals suffer impact of deforestation even if they live in protected areas

Wildlife sanctuaries fail to fully protect tropical animals from harmful human activities, a major study has found.

Mammals including the jaguar, the mountain gorilla, and the Sunda pangolin were all found to be affected by human activities, even when they resided in the depths of a nature reserve.

Findings come as nations gather in London to discuss new carbon levy

Greenhouse gas emissions from shipping could be halved by 2030 without damaging trade, new research has found, as countries prepare to meet to discuss a potential new tax on carbon produced by ships.

Emissions from maritime transportation amount to about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and there are few alternatives to the cheap, heavy and dirty diesel oil used by ships.

A drone pilot captures footage of a humpback whale following a kayaker near Bondi beach. Up to 50,000 whales are expected to pass Australia’s east coast during the annual migration from Antarctica to the Great Barrier Reef. Humpback whales were removed from Australia's threatened species list last year after a significant increase in numbers, from just 1,500 at the height of the commercial whaling industry to an estimated 40,000

• Young humpbacks ‘full of beans’ as whale-watching season takes off in Sydney

• Humpbacks spotted having whale of a time at underwater ‘day spa’ off Gold Coast

Seawalls are causing intertidal habitats to vanish as ocean levels increase. But eco-entrepreneurs say artificial rockpools and crevices can save wildlife

• ‘It’s absolutely guaranteed’: the best and worst case scenarios for sea level rise

The rain has just stopped falling when Nigel George walks down to the beach in Sandown Bay on the Isle of Wight. He crosses the coastal road and descends a concrete stairway, a sheen of sand covering its lowest steps. The place is quiet, with only a few walkers animating the shoreline.

He’s here to inspect a wooden groyne – a kind of jetty, designed to prevent erosion – which stretches out into the sea and towards France. The groyne has been fitted with a series of small, basin-like, rough concrete, structures. George peers inside one: a congregation of limpets, barnacles, seaweed, and a single sea snail peer back at him.

Residents seek respite from the heat as temperatures above 40C (104F) have been recorded for a third consecutive day in Beijing for the first time

Government’s buyout scheme is meeting fierce resistance from farmers in Netherlands

Veal farmer Wim Brouwer sits on his terrace, an “emergency” red flag flying outside and his laptop open on a page revealing he is one of the Netherlands’ peak polluters, due to the nitrogen excreted each year by his 1,360 calves.

His business sits in one of the most intensively farmed parts of Europe’s most intensively farmed country, a huge exporter with more than 110 million livestock, including cattle, chickens and pigs.

Plans for the world’s first commercial octopus farm are well advanced – just as science discovers more about this curious, intelligent and affectionate animal. Can it be done ethically?

The sterile boardroom, much of it taken up by a lengthy white table, is at the heart of the sprawling building in northern Spain. The corporate chatter that fills this room these days, however, is dominated by the scene playing out one floor below, where about 50 adult male octopuses are in a tank the size of a budget hotel room.

A handful of the octopuses – the fifth generation to be born in this Spanish multinational’s concrete-and-glass office and research centre – skim through the shallow waters, some brushing up against each other while others tuck into the tank’s barren corners. A low-intensity light casts a pale glow as researchers lay the groundwork for one of the world’s most controversial endeavours: the first commercial octopus farm.