The Guardian

With demand set to rise across the world, Australia is set to become a global primary producer of hydrogen

In March, the Queensland University of Technology made history when it achieved the first export of a small quantity of clean, green hydrogen produced in Australia from renewable energy, to Japanese energy giant JXTG – proving that it was in fact possible.

Hydrogen is increasingly being seen as an alternative to LNG and other fossil fuels and Australia has a lot togain from a new export industry, with companies such as Woodside Energy and Siemens already investing.

New report ranks deadliest cities for feathered travelers, who often collide with glass-covered or illuminated buildings

Scientists estimate that at least 100 million and maybe as many as a billion birds die each year in the US when they collide with buildings, especially glass-covered or illuminated skyscrapers. And, in a new report, conservationists now have a better idea which American cities are the deadliest for those on the wing.

Chicago, with its many glass superstructures that spike into what is the busiest US avian airspace during migration, is the most dangerous city for those feathered travelers. More than 5 million birds from at least 250 different species fly through the Windy City’s downtown every fall and spring.

British photographer Stephen Gill would often gaze out of a window of his home in Skåne, Sweden, to find a vast yet empty sky. A bird enthusiast from a young age – his first teenage photographic project focused on bird tables – he determined to capture Skåne’s native species and placed a pillar at the end of a field and a camera with a motion sensor opposite. The experiment worked: dozens of birds unwittingly posed for the camera. “Viewing what had taken place often left me stunned,” Gill says. Once, “a white-tailed eagle somehow managed to perch on the 6cm diameter stage”. His study, now a book called The Pillar (out 20 April, Nobody Books, with words by Karl Ove Knausgård), continued for four years: “I simply could not stop as infinite variations kept presenting.”

Teaching union to debate call for schools to oppose fossil fuel giant’s backing of school fitness event

The UK’s biggest teaching union is to decide whether to object to fossil fuel giant Ineos sponsoring the school Daily Mile initiative over allegations the company is using the event to greenwash its image.

Campaigners accuse Ineos, owned by the UK’s richest man, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, of endangering the wellbeing of future generations through its fracking activities and plastics production.

A three-toed skink’s unusual birth, a dead whale full of plastic and young elephants stuck in the mud

So Adrian Chiles (G2, 4 April) has noticed buddleia bushes growing out of derelict buildings and judges them to signify industrial neglect. He suggests the plant does not grow so much in London because land is too expensive. In fact buddleia grows everywhere in London, sprouting from the tops of many buildings that are not abandoned and forming great thickets along railway lines. It is also a prized garden plant, attracting a great variety of insects, and is commonly called “the butterfly bush”. And though it is from China and was brought to Europe by a Frenchman, Linnaeus named it after the Rev Adam Buddle of Hadleigh rectory, Essex, in honour of observations he had made of local plants. Buddle never saw the butterfly bush, as he died more than a century before it was introduced in the last decade of Victoria’s reign.
Gavin Weightman
London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

As CO2 levels climb, the carbon count is a daily reminder we must tackle climate change now

The simplest measure of how the mass burning of fossil fuels is disrupting the stable climate in which human civilisation developed is the number of carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere.

Today, the CO2 level is the highest it has been for several million years. Back then, temperatures were 3-4C hotter, sea level was 15-20 metres higher and trees grew at the south pole. Worse, billions of tonnes of carbon pollution continues to pour into the air every year and at a rate 10 times faster than for 66m years.

Experts say even nations that got rich on fossil fuels are seeing the future is green

Norway’s $1tn oil fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, is to plunge billions of dollars into wind and solar power projects. The decision follows Saudi Arabia’s oil fund selling off its last oil and gas assets.

Other national funds built up from oil profits are also thought to be ramping up their investments in renewables. The moves show that countries that got rich on fossil fuels are diversifying their investments and seeking future profits in the clean energy needed to combat climate change. Analysts say the investments are likely to power faster growth of green energy.

Some developers are reviewing their policies after protests from environmentalists

A grassroots uprising is forcing builders and councils to remove netting over trees and hedgerows installed to prevent birds nesting and hindering their developments.

Environmentalists have condemned the practice and say it has exploded in scale this spring. The use of netting to prevent birds nesting in hedgerows and trees allows developers to get around the law that prevents the removal and damage of birds nests, and avoid delays to development caused by the nesting season.

The California tide soon washes away work by Andres Amador – but for the artist, that is part of the point

With a bundle of three-pronged tools and hand-assembled rakes cast over one shoulder, the artist Andres Amador quietly descends the steep, crumbling dunes arching over a San Francisco shoreline to the beach below.

Scanning the horizon, stopping every so often to smile and pick up smooth stones, he walks until it seems right – until he finds a wide enough stretch of wet sand to serve as his canvas. Soon, it will come to life, etched with the large-scale angles and arches that form his captivating, signature style of Earthscape art.

Government forced to play down ‘split’ amid reports of Queensland MPs pressuring Coalition over key approvals for Carmichael coalmine

Labor has warned the government against making any major decisions on the Adani coalmine before the election, while Scott Morrison and his environment minister Melissa Price face internal pressure from some Queensland MPs to take action.

While playing down reports of a “split”, government MPs from Queensland, including James McGrath and Matt Canavan have kept up pressure inside Morrison’s office and the party room for key approvals for the Carmichael coalmine, including the ground water plan, to be signed off on as soon as possible.

Government modelling for climate policy cuts assumes an electric vehicle uptake of 25-50% of new car sales by 2030

Modelling for the Morrison government’s climate policy assumes electric vehicles will make up between 25% and 50% of new car sales by 2030, a similar figure to the target set by the Labor party, which the Coalition criticised this week.

Labor’s climate spokesman, Mark Butler, said “it shows how out of touch the Liberals are even with their own department” when it comes to cutting carbon pollution from transport.

Big Garden Birdwatch finds fall in long-tailed tits and wrens after ‘beast from the east’

Almost 1.2 million house sparrows were spotted in British gardens during this winter’s Big Garden Birdwatch but smaller garden birds appear to have suffered from the previous winter’s cold weather.

Long-tailed tits decreased by more than 27% and wrens by 17% in 2019 after bumper years in 2018, according to the RSPB survey. Populations of both species are thought to have been affected by last year’s “beast from the east”: small birds are more susceptible to extreme chilly spells.

George Monbiot (The natural world can help save us from climate chaos, 3 April), Greta Thunberg and other signatories (Letters, 3 April) are right. Nature can provide effective options to help tackle climate change. Often there is no need for complicated, expensive and unproven technology. As we know from our work in such countries as Bhutan and Costa Rica, some governments are embracing nature-based solutions where natural forests are managed for their key role in storing carbon and regulating water for clean, green hydropower. Policies and investment need to work with local people and focus on linking nature to infrastructure to help avoid catastrophic climate change, protect biodiversity and cut emissions. The real challenge is to align the politics of change to the actions that are needed. While some countries are doing the right thing, in other places (such as Brazil) the politics is going backwards in deeply troubling ways.

The international community needs to act to support local livelihoods and enable communities to be good stewards of the natural world. Our lives depend on it.
Andrew Norton
Director, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

The MCPP invites photographers to tell a story of how they experience living in Australia. This year, themes of drought, immigration and identity feature heavily in the entries. The winner of the $50,000 prize will be announced on 7 May

When we think of the effects of climate change it’s easy to focus on rising sea levels – but what about the changes happening much higher up? At Mount Hotham in Victoria a unique creature spends months under the snow: Australia’s only hibernating marsupial, the mountain pygmy possum. This tiny animal was once thought extinct. Now, zoos and ski-resorts are doing everything they can to keep it alive, but it faces a changing climate, which may create insurmountable challenges

Panel was disbanded after a Trump official voiced concerns that it did not have enough members ‘from industry’

A US government climate change advisory group scrapped by Donald Trump has reassembled independently to call for better adaptation to the floods, wildfires and other threats that increasingly loom over American communities.

The Trump administration disbanded the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment in August 2017. The group, formed under Barack Obama’s presidency, provided guidance to the government based on the National Climate Assessment, a major compendium of climate science released every four years.

The purple shrub thrives in dereliction and decay. How much better things would be if it had nowhere to grow

A couple of years ago, I was with a TV director, standing on Soho Road in Handsworth, Birmingham. There was a break in filming while someone faffed around with something. This gave the two of us chance to pause and admire a derelict pub called the Red Lion. It was built at the start of the last century and remains, for all its dilapidation, a magnificent sight.

My colleague pointed at a bush, thriving improbably out of a crack high up in the terracotta facade. “That,” he said, “is a buddleia. It’s incredibly hardy, it can take root anywhere.”

Existing legislation requires ‘complete overhaul’ to prevent the decline of species, committee warns

A Senate committee examining Australia’s animal extinction crisis has recommended new environment laws to try to halt the decline of threatened species.

The laws, proposed in an interim report by the committee, would include a new, independent national environmental protection authority that would have sufficient powers and funding to enforce compliance with environment law.

Study creates blueprint to safeguard marine life and enable ocean recovery

Academics have mapped out a network of sanctuaries they say are required to save the world’s oceans, protect wildlife and fight climate breakdown.

The study, ahead of a historic vote at the UN, sets out the first detailed plan of how countries can protect over a third of the world’s oceans by 2030, a target scientists and policy makers say is crucial in order to safeguard marine ecosystems and help mitigate the impacts of a rapidly heating world.