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EU nations are likely to overachieve on the bloc's overall targets for installing solar power over this decade, according to a business group's assessment of the government plans submitted to date.

World’s tiniest marine mammal – found only in the Gulf of California in Mexico – has only 10 individuals left, study finds

The International Whaling Commission has issued the first “extinction alert” in its 70-year history, to warn of the danger facing the vaquita, the world’s tiniest and most critically endangered marine mammal.

A recent study shows that the small porpoise, found only in the Gulf of California in Mexico, has only 10 individuals left. It has been driven to the edge of extinction due to entanglement in fishing nets known as “gillnets”, which are now illegal in the area.

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Tyre Extinguishers claim responsibility for attack to highlight ‘presence of grossly inappropriate private vehicles’ on roads

Anti-SUV activists used a power drill to sabotage the tyres of more than 60 4x4 vehicles at a car dealership, in an attack they described as a reprisal for the deaths of two girls in a crash at a primary school last month.

In the early hours of Monday morning, activists crept on to the forecourt of the Vertu Jaguar showroom in Exeter. They told the Guardian they went from vehicle to vehicle drilling holes in the sidewalls of all four tyres on each, so they must be replaced.

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Soggy July has affected wheat, barley and hay crops as waterlogged soil makes some harder to harvest

The unseasonably wet weather is causing problems for this year’s harvest, experts have said, with wheat, barley and hay crops affected.

Many farmers have been signed up to a nature-friendly scheme called Mid Tier, which does not allow hay to be cut until July to help wildlife.

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Oarfish swim vertically, moving up and down and side to side like a cursor. It would be easier to believe that they do not exist

A giant oarfish, also known as the “king of herrings”, is an eight-metre long ribbon of silver, tapered at its tail and on its head wearing a permanently stunned face – as though moments ago it was a normal herring and then the world’s largest chef slapped it down on a bench top and rolled over it with a rolling pin.

“These are unpredictable fish,” research biologist Milton Love told the New York Times 10 years ago. But in Japan, oarfish are considered highly predictable: they predict the future. See an oarfish, the story goes, and an earthquake will follow. In the months before Japan’s 2011 earthquake, one of the most powerful ever recorded, 20 oarfish were found on beaches. They’re known as “messengers from the sea god’s palace”, or jinja hime, “shrine princesses”.

The sea god’s palace, Ryūgū-jō, has four sides, each of which faces one of the four seasons. The expression on the oarfish’s face, with one wide eye on each side, makes sense viewed like this, too – one side is seeing the past, and the other the future. Things don’t look good: looking east it sees plum and cherry blossoms, looking west it sees a maple tree making “fire in the branches”.

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The British summer is still based on pre-industrial events. It’s time a government had the guts to shake up the holiday year

If you had booked an August holiday in Britain 10 days ago, then heard the weather forecast, you probably would have taken the first train to Gatwick. The forecast for the following week was awful – for storms, clouds, rain and “unseasonably cold” weather. In other words, another typical August.

In the event the forecast was wildly inaccurate. Where I was on the Welsh coast, just one day passed without sun for all or part of the day. It did rain heavily for part of one day and there was the odd shower. It certainly was not hot. But a week on the beach was feasible, the sea blue and the sunsets glorious. That we saw relatively few visitors was entirely the result of the forecast, according to local businesses. One publican told me he can predict his takings each day not by the weather but by the 8am forecast. Yet it is so often wrong. The weather forecast is England’s economic sanction against Wales.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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European carbon allowance prices edged lower in continued thin trading on Monday morning, shrugging off healthy gains in natural gas as data showed further contractions in industrial output in the EU's largest economy, while energy prices rose in response to increased risks around Russian commodity exports from the Black Sea after attacks on shipping over the weekend.

An India-based carbon developer has submitted a coral reef project in Indonesia’s West Papua for pilot status under Verra’s emerging biodiversity methodology, with plans for other project types already teed up.

Taiwan's main bourse on Monday unveiled a government-backed carbon exchange in Kaohsiung, which will start offering trade in domestic carbon credits in the first half of 2024 at the earliest, while international units might become available later this year.

Rwanda will not sell carbon credits below $30 per tonne and will also look to develop new technology-focused projects as well as expand those involving its forests, the country's minister of environment was reported as saying by local media.

EnergyAustralia says it is nearing decisions on the first big batteries it will actually own in Australia as it plans to spend $400 million upgrading its Yallourn brown coal generator.

The post EnergyAustralia closes in on first big battery deals as it searches for new partner appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Traded NZU volumes rose Monday, pushing the price up slightly, as a National opposition party spokesperson said they would not make major changes to the country's ETS if it wins government in the October election.

One of Japan's largest oil refiners has teamed up with an international aquaculture accelerator to explore the potential of blue carbon in the country, seeking the creation of domestically issued blue credits.

Reduction in primary forest loss in Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as Brazil and Colombia, offers hope for tropical forests across the world

Falling deforestation rates in countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Colombia and Brazil could provide a boost to climate and biodiversity efforts, experts say, in the run-up to a key summit on the future of the Amazon rainforest.

In the coming days, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will host a pan-Amazonian summit on the future of the world’s largest rainforest, with leaders from Venezuela to Peru hoping to present a plan at Cop28 to halt their destruction. Experts have said if rich countries provide backing to tropical forested countries it could help governments deliver on Cop26 promises to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030.

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On urgent issues from strikes to the climate, voters are increasingly progressive. If only our so-called leaders would catch up

An expiring Tory party lashing about for electoral resuscitation by doubling down on a small number of pugnacious policies. A Labour opposition that has straitjacketed its pledges and ambitions with its fears of blowing its strongest chance in years to gain power. That is the slim space that now defines Westminster, making the preoccupations and tones of our politicians seem more remote than ever.

The result is a widening gulf between people’s reality and what they are relentlessly told they actually believe in and care about. Take immigration – a topic that has for the past three decades been at the top of the political agenda, and is now firmly established as something many should have “concerns” about. But attitudes among the public are flexible, dependent on the type of immigration and the general political mood.

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NSW to double capacity of its first renewable energy zone as it races to fill the gap to be created by coal closures, and as anti-transmission sentiment deepens.

The post NSW super-sizes first renewable zone as it races to meet coal closure deadlines appeared first on RenewEconomy.

News of “material and significant” cost increases for Marinus Link cause Tasmania to revisit its support for the project.

The post Tasmania questions whether Marinus Link “stacks up” as project costs soar appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australian oil and gas company Santos has signed an agreement with Timor-Leste’s national oil company Timor Gap to explore cooperation opportunities on its Bayu-Undan CCS project.

Our inability to confidently predict sea level rise between an extremely challenging two metres and a civilisation-ending 10 metres is an exemplar of the problem facing researchers

These last few months have been a turbulent time to be an oceanographer, particularly one specialising in the vast Southern Ocean around Antarctica and its role in our climate. The media has been awash with stories of marine heatwaves across the northern hemisphere, the potential collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation by mid-century and the record-breaking deficit in Antarctic sea ice emerging this southern winter. Alongside heatwaves and bushfires in North America and southern Europe, flooding in China and South American winter temperatures above 38C, the climate has moved from a “future problem” to a “now problem” in the minds of many.

The global climate is one hugely complex interconnected system. While the Antarctic and Southern Ocean are far removed from our daily lives, they play an oversized role in this system and the future climate that concerns humanity now. “Global warming” is really “ocean warming”. The atmospheric temperature change, the 1.5C Paris target we are now perilously near to exceeding, really is only a few percent of our total excess trapped heat. Almost all the rest is in the ocean and it is around Antarctica that it is predominantly taken up. How this uptake may change in the future as winds, temperatures and ice shift is a critical scientific, and human, question.

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It will take a year to move all 75 turbines, separated into 11 parts, from Port Adelaide to the site of the state's biggest wind project.

The post Giant turbines at Goyder South project to begin epic journey inland from September appeared first on RenewEconomy.