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Sir Howard Davies, of the Airports Commission lends backing to expanding UK’s largest airport instead of Gatwick

The case for Heathrow expansion is now “overwhelming”, according to the man who led the government commissioned review of airport capacity.

Sir Howard Davies, chair of the Airports Commission, said Brexit underlined the need for a “clear strategic decision” in favour of Heathrow by ministers.

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Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 27 October 1916

Surrey, October 27
Things change more rapidly in their appearance now in one day than they did in two a fortnight ago, but this is seen mostly in the valleys and the greater woods which border the streams. Under the trees you walk ankle deep in fallen leaves, thick-stemmed sycamore and chestnut, that are heavy enough to impede your way; beech in heaps in the remoter parts where a few squirrels, almost disdaining at first to move, presently scurry up a trunk and along the limbs, their bushy tails showing now on this side and then on the other; oaks as green as in September on the top but turning yellow in the bottom branches; ash drooping with the weight of late autumn; and birch becoming bare but silvered to the extremity of its hanging stems. Overhead the change which you most note is that whereas a few weeks ago daylight scarcely penetrated these recesses, misty beams now shoot through. Wood-pigeons, whirring out of the tree-tops, are as blue nearly as the sky. Then clouds come over, and when rain falls it is as if winter had suddenly closed in.

Higher on the heath there is new life rather than decay. The fume bears fresh yellow bloom, scented faintly, and where the full flower is not open there are buds under the green spikes. Red bryony, standing out of the hedges which mark off parts of the downs, has leaf buds too on the lower branches. Chaffinches fly in small flocks, and presently a hare “lops,” as the farmers say, from her form to the higher ground. Her speed increases in higher leaps as she goes, until her white tuft disappears in the tall brown grass which lines the ridge. She has gone into the turnip-field on the other side.

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The rosemary beetle arrived in Britain over twenty years ago, and is chewing its way through our culinary favourites – heading north at an alarming rate

If you discover your favourite aromatic plants and herbs are looking chewed this autumn the culprit is almost certainly the rosemary beetle (Chrysolina Americana), an unwelcome new addition to the UK’s gardens – thanks to climate change.

Despite its name, Americana, its original home is the Mediterranean and North Africa, but the increasing warmth of the British climate means it can now survive and thrive here. It was first seen London in 1994 and after a slow start it has rapidly spread in England and now reached Scotland and Northern Ireland.

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Putting a price on carbon would benefit the Australian gas industry, at least in the short term. It is therefore in the interests of gas producers to lobby for the emissions trading scheme proposed for the electricity industry by the Climate Change Authority.

At first a sight this might seem a paradoxical suggestion. Isn’t carbon pricing meant to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels after all?

But with gas prices high, coal-fired generation has been increasing. Coal produces about twice as much carbon dioxide as gas when it is used to generate electricity. This is bad news for our emissions, which have increased in the electricity sector recently.

A price on carbon would help to reverse this trend and enable gas to play the role it sees for itself as a stepping stone to a decarbonised future.

So how might this work in practice?

Less gas means more coal

In Australia, electricity demand is relatively flat, so we are not likely to see an increase in the number of fossil fuel power stations. Nor are we likely to see new gas-fired power stations built to replace existing coal-fired power stations – that makes little economic sense at the moment.

This is where the current price of gas is important. Because the newly-completed liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals in Queensland are sucking up so much gas for export, the domestic price for gas has risen to the point that gas-fired power stations in the eastern states are increasingly unable to compete with coal.

As a result the amount of coal-fired generation has been steadily increasing over the last couple of years while gas-fired generation has been cut back “very substantially”. Some gas-fired power stations have been mothballed. So there is now considerable, unused gas-fired generation capacity.

From the point of view of gas producers, this is therefore a perfect time to introduce a price on carbon, since it will drive up the price of coal-fired power, relative to gas. This will slow to decline in gas use and ultimately reverse it. Gas-fired generators will be able to meet this increased demand from existing, under-used capacity.

In this scenario, gas-fired generators would buy gas at the current relatively high prices. This means that electricity will be more expensive to produce. Whether this means that consumers end up paying higher prices is another matter and depends critically on the design of the carbon-pricing scheme.

Policy hotchpotch

The government’s Climate Change Authority recently proposed a carbon-pricing scheme for the electricity industry, known as an emissions-intensity scheme. It is designed to be as palatable as possible to both sides of politics, so that if implemented it would not suffer the fate of the Labor government’s carbon tax, which the Liberal opposition abhorred and abolished as soon as it gained power in 2014.

One of the features of the Authority’s proposal is that it is not a tax paid to government. Rather it involves a subsidy paid by high-emissions, low-cost generators, such as coal-fired power stations, to low-emissions, higher-cost generators such as gas-fired power stations. This means that gas-fired generators will not need to pass on their full production costs to consumers. This will minimise the impact on electricity prices.

Of course, if the government were to accept the Authority’s recommendations for the electricity sector, it would presumably accept its recommendations for other areas of the economy. This is significant, because gas producers don’t just feed into the electricity sector.

Exported LNG would not be subject to any carbon price in Australia because it is not consumed here. However, converting natural gas to its liquid form consumes a large amount of energy. Indeed, 8% of the gas supplied to LNG terminals is used in the production process. This makes LNG an emissions-intensive industry.

Any price imposed on such emissions would drive up the price of Australian LNG relative to countries with no similar carbon price, to the detriment of Australia’s producers. In short, LNG is a “trade-exposed industry”. In particular, in the language of policy makers, it is an EITE (emissions-intensive and trade-exposed) industry.

The Authority considered the case of EITE industries carefully and expressed sympathy with the submission on this point made by the peak oil and gas producers association – APPEA.

It recommended that policy for EITE industries should include a suite of measures designed to protect them from this kind of competition. The LNG industry therefore has little to fear from the implementation of the Authority’s recommendations in this respect.

The Climate Change Authority did not recommend that existing polices be dismantled and replaced with a single coherent, economy-wide policy. Instead it recommended additions to the patchwork of existing polices, with a particular focus on the electricity sector.

This was criticised in some quarters as unprincipled, but defended by the Authority on the grounds that it was vital that we find a way forward that was as bipartisan as possible, so as to provide maximum certainty for investors. APPEA’s submission to the Authority was clearly against this “hotchpotch” approach.

But the Authority’s proposals offer the best chance for achieving bipartisan support. The government intends to review its climate policies in the coming year. APPEA should be lobbying the government to implement the Authority’s proposals, both in its own interests and in the interest of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Andrew Hopkins has been a consultant to various petroleum companies on ways to reduce major accident risk.

The government’s decision to greenlight aviation expansion (Chris Grayling: decision on airport expansion to be made on Tuesday, theguardian.com, 23 October) is a predictable failure, but not an acceptable one. With the scrapping of vital decarbonisation policies and funding, the UK is already way off-track to meet our climate change commitments. The impacts of any new runway will be devastating to people’s lives and to the planet. Locally it will see the demolition of hundreds of homes, result in increased noise pollution, and illegal levels of air pollution – already responsible for almost 10,000 premature deaths in London every year.

But the biggest tragedy of the government’s failure is a global one. Only around 5% of the world’s population flies at all, yet the impacts of climate change – droughts, floods and heatwaves – are already hitting poorer communities in the global south, who are the least likely to ever set foot on a plane.

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Transport secretary denies government has already decided which plan it will back in choice between Heathrow or Gatwick

The government’s decision over which London airport expansion scheme it will finally choose is expected to come on Tuesday, after the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, said the decision would be made at a cabinet committee meeting that day.

Grayling said that the government had still not decided which option to choose and would make the final decision on the day. He is expected to announce the choice to the House of Commons as soon as it has been made.

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Transport secretary Chris Grayling denies government has already decided which plan to back at Heathrow or Gatwick, during an appearance at BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, adding that a decision will be made on Tuesday during a cabinet committee meeting. The committee will meet amid predictions that the government has already opted to push for expansion at Heathrow

• Read: Chris Grayling: decision on airport expansion to be made on Tuesday

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Trees are coming under attack from beetles and moths that are infesting imported timber

In July 2013, a large, strangely shaped beetle emerged from the fabric of a wooden chair that had just been bought in the UK. The inch-long creature had developed inside the chair’s wooden frame before it ate its way to the surface and burst through the seat’s plastic covering – much to the alarm of its purchaser. Crucially, the furniture had been made in, and imported from, China.

Analysis by Fera Science, formerly the Food and Environment Research Agency, showed the beetle was a Japanese pine sawyer. Worse, the beetle was found to be infested with a second serious pest: the pinewood nematode worm. In combination, the beetle (Monochamus alternatus) and worm (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus) have been linked to widespread damage to pine forests in China and Japan. Now it is spreading through parts of Europe.

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How highly should we rate the energy ratings?

It’s not very rock’n’roll, but I’ve always loved an energy rating. A third of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions come from Energy Using Products (EUPs) in offices and industry and also, significantly, in our own homes, too. The ones we control can really help to reduce that percentage, so choosing the best energy-rated model makes sense.

EU energy labels give us an easy way to power down. Regulated by European law, they can help us see how efficient a product is before we buy it, and also mandate vampirical products that suck power out of the grid when you think they’re asleep (since 2010 products cannot have standby power greater than 1W). Don’t ask me what happens after Brexit. I worry about that, too.

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Canadian scientists use drones to capture rare whale footage in the Arctic.

Ministers reveal 169 local authorities breached annual legal limits on nitrogen oxide, linked to lung disease, last year

Four in 10 of Britain’s local authorities breached legal air quality limits last year, largely due to heavy road traffic, government records reveal.

Ministers have admitted that 169 local authorities were found to have gone over annual limits on nitrogen dioxide. It is an invisible gas produced predominantly by road traffic, and is linked to lung disease and cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes.

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The battle for Mosul, the ongoing violence in Syria, the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week

WARNING: this gallery includes images that some might find distressing

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Borrowdale, Lake District Borrowdale is thriving following an era of being successfully farmed by generations of Westmorland hill farmers

Several faces, mottled black and white, glance up as I alight from the car. On seeing no dog, these Rough Fells – burly ewes with horns – return to grazing the open fell, unalarmed.

Following the A685 Kendal road south from Tebay in the Lune Gorge, I had turned off through woodland of rowan, alder, birch and holly, and parked along a byway running for nine miles west towards Shap summit through the “other” Borrowdale. This is Howgills country, lonely and mysterious and devoid of the crags and lakes that bring the tourists to the Borrowdale near Keswick. Yet in a reshuffle of the boundaries, it too has recently become part of the Lake District national park.

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The phrase 'mate for life' might have romantic connotations for humans, but the reality of such a relationship for the long-lived Australian Magpie involves turf wars, potential sex on the side and the possibility of a foster dad bringing up your kids if you get too aggro.

As Tim Entwisle's habit of inventing new seasons continues, Matthew Crawford helps him chart a future for the world's largest urban elm forest while asking how Australia can adapt to stronger cyclones.

The suggestion that the previous government failed to address questions surrounding air quality (Report, 20 October) does not reflect the progress that has been made on the issue since December 2015. Since then, the government’s air quality plan, updated modelling undertaken by Heathrow and an independent study by Cambridge University have all shown that baseline air-quality levels around the airport will have significantly improved by the time a new runway is built, as the nation’s vehicle fleet gradually becomes cleaner.

The Airports Commission’s analysis concluded that a third runway at Heathrow can be delivered in accordance with EU air-quality limit law, and would have less impact on health receptors (where people live and work) than a runway at Gatwick would have on the community in that area. A new runway at the UK’s hub airport represents an opportunity to deliver significant improvements to air quality around Heathrow: the redesign of local roads, support for sustainable transport and the opportunity to introduce an airport emissions charge all have the potential to bring improvements in air quality.

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There might not be the clopping of horses, or the smell of kerosene lamps, but there's no doubt Central Victoria is once again home to a gold rush.

The gouge in the ground likely made by Europe's Schiaparelli probe as it hit the surface of Mars on Wednesday has been imaged by an American satellite.

English comedian Bill Bailey on the comedy that ensues from travelling.

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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