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Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Energy Minister Angus Taylor keep telling Australians the government will meet its emission reductions targets "at a a canter" — but the experts aren't so sure.

The official was criticised for risking the UN's reputation by extensive use of expensive travel.

Norway’s oil firm Equinor plans to buy REDD forest protection credits to offset its emissions from operations not already covered by carbon pricing, it said Tuesday, while revealing plans to ramp up its foreign exploration.

European carbon ended higher on Tuesday but off the day’s peak after EUAs saw their rally disrupted by a rout in wider energy and financial markets.

UK government called on to impose fee on new plastic packaging and offer rebate for recycled products

The government should introduce a new tax on virgin packaging to revolutionise the recycling system in the UK and tackle the plastics crisis, according to a new report.

The study, presented to MPs and industry figures at Westminster on Tuesday evening, calls on ministers to impose a fee on packaging materials and offer a rebate for those products that use more recycled material.

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Drinking water in Australia can be contaminated by natural and manmade processes, especially in communities. Innovation is needed to ensure water is ‘fit for purpose, place and people’. Nina Lansbury Hall, Lecturer, Environmental Health Unit, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland Susan Mott, Senior Research Officer, The University of Queensland Wendy Hoy, Professor of Medicine; Director, Centre for Chronic Disease, and Director, NHMRC CKD.CRE, The University of Queensland Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

IMO ‘susceptible to influence from private interests and certain states’ say campaigners

The UN agency responsible for cutting shipping emissions to combat climate change has been accused of operating like a secretive closed shop.

The charity Transparency International has condemned six countries, including the UK and the US, for opposing moves to open the International Maritime Organization to public scrutiny and hampering moves to combat climate change.

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Erik Solheim resigns after audit found travel irregularities and internal rule breaking, leading nations to drop funding

The UN’s environment chief Erik Solheim has resigned following severe criticism over his globetrotting travels and internal rule-breaking which led some nations to withhold their funding.

The Guardian understands Solheim was asked to resign by the UN secretary general António Guterres. Sources at the UN Environment Programme (Unep) said that countries unhappy with Solheim’s conduct were holding back tens of millions of dollars, threatening an imminent financial crisis at the body.

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When anti-whaling activists arrived in Albany, they planned to convince the town that their future was in watching whales, not killing them. Forty years on, they remember the moment commercial whaling ended in Australia

The message came over the radio and was relayed into the engine room of the Cheynes IV whale chaser, where engineer Bob Reeby was at work.

“That was it: ‘Home speed, we’re going home’. That was the end of an era. It was a pretty sad moment,” Reeby recalls.

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A dead whale that washed ashore in eastern Indonesia had a large lump of collected plastic waste in its stomach, including flip-flops and 115 drinking cups, a park official has said, causing concern among environmentalists and government officials in one of the world’s largest plastic-polluting countries

• Indonesia: dead whale had 1,000 pieces of plastic in stomach

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After a photo appeared online depicting a giant rat, several experts offer their view on how it came to be so large

A rat-catcher has caught a giant rat. A photograph of the rodent, stretched out from nose to tail, beside a tape measure shows that it ran to 53cm (21in). Or it did before it ran into the rat-catcher’s manchester terrier.

“There’s a definite increase in rat numbers and a definite increase in size,” says Terry Walker, who caught and measured the creature in Bournemouth, Dorset. (He happened to have a tape measure on him for repairs, not to measure rats.)

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Analysis finds toxic air trims lifespans by 1.8 years, making it main threat to human health

Air pollution cuts the average lifespan of people around the globe by almost two years, analysis shows, making it the single greatest threat to human health.

The research looked at the particulate pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuels by vehicles and industry. It found that in many parts of the worst-affected nations – India and China – lifespans were being shortened by six years.

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The dead sperm whale, which washed ashore in Indonesia, had ingested nearly 6kg of plastic waste.

The Guangdong carbon exchange on Tuesday announced another small auction of offsets eligible for use in the provincial emissions trading scheme, with the minimum bid price set at only around half the clearing price of last week’s sale.

Sperm whale washed up in Sulawesi had flip-flops, bottles, bags and 115 drinking cups in its stomach

A dead whale that washed ashore in eastern Indonesia had a large lump of plastic waste in its stomach, including flip-flops and 115 drinking cups, a park official has said, causing concern among environmentalists and government officials in one of the world’s largest plastic polluting countries.

Related: 'Sad surprise': Amazon fish contaminated by plastic particles

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The entrepreneur would not reveal why he had renamed the craft, which has still not yet been built.

There is debate around how much Albert Einstein's first wife, Mileva, contributed to his discoveries.

The $21.4 million Australian Heritage Grants program will run over four years and is aimed at strengthening the recognition, management, conservation and public engagement on Australia’s National Heritage List places.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Large Canadian emitters to be regulated by the federal government’s output-based pricing standard (OBPS) from 2019 will face a compliance unit deficit of nearly 12 million tonnes during the market’s inaugural year, according to a new report released Monday.