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Former Bank of England governor says businesses prioritise countries with clean power and consistent strategies

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Rishi Sunak watering down the UK’s climate commitments has damaged Britain’s position on the world stage for business investment, according to the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney.

In highly critical comments, Carney indicated that global companies would now think twice about locating their activities in the UK after Sunak pushed back key net zero deadlines and sanctioned new oil and gas drilling.

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Rishi Sunak’s risible rhetoric about a divide between motorists and ‘woke’ spoilsports is easy to counter – but Labour shows little sign of wanting to do so

Following hard on the prime minister’s defence of the drivers who are supposedly victimised by London’s Ulez extension, and Penny Mordaunt’s rubbishing of 20mph speed limits in Wales (currently in force in parts of her own constituency), we now have the transport secretary, Mark Harper, denouncing “sinister … so-called 15-minute cities”.

This dismissal of measures that provide safer, pleasanter and more sustainable urban living is being pressed in the name of “freedom”: the freedom of city-dwellers to live unharassed by meddling environmentalist do-gooders; the freedom, in Sunak’s words, of drivers “to use their cars to do all the things that matter to them” – a liberty supposedly under threat from the “anti-motorist” Labour party.

Kate Soper is emeritus professor of philosophy at London Metropolitan University. Her most recent book is Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism. Martin Ryle writes about politics and the environment. He is the author of the book Ecology and Socialism

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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The sound of ‘super predator’ human voices instils more terror around the waterhole than the big cats’ roar, researchers discover

The lion has long been regarded as the world’s most fearsome terrestrial carnivore, but the “king of beasts” has been toppled by humans, new research shows.

Elephants, rhinos and giraffes are all now more afraid of people than other apex predators, according to a scientific paper that supports the idea that humans are the world’s “super predator”.

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The EU's compliance carbon market will need an estimated 200 million tonnes of carbon removals by mid-century to cancel out residual emissions in the mechanism, analysts said Thursday, based on a modelling of the 'least cost' way to meet the bloc's 2050 net zero target.

EU legislators failed to advance past initial exchanges in their first attempt to finalise the bloc's divisive nature restoration bill on Thursday, instead asking officials to craft compromises in an effort to break an impasse. 

The UN's Green Climate Fund (GCF) has secured $9.3 billion in pledges across 25 countries with a large proportion announcing cash at a high-level event in Germany on Thursday, though the total remains below each of the previous two fundraises.

Sex determination of sea turtles is temperature dependent, with the proportion of female hatchlings increasing when nests are warmer

Similar numbers of female and male green and hawksbill turtles are hatching in the Coral Sea’s Conflict Islands, new research suggests, despite global heating increasingly leading to “extreme feminisation” of sea turtles.

Sea turtles are particularly susceptible to the effects of global heating because their sex determination is temperature dependent, with the proportion of female hatchlings increasing when nests are warmer.

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… to be announced at 12.30pm AEDT. Follow our live blog from 11.30am for the red carpet, emotional speeches and all the reaction

• Find all our bird of the year content
• Download your Australian birds poster as a jpeg or pdf (large file)

The campaigns are over. The votes are in. The scrutineers are in the tally room.

The winner of the 2023 Guardian/BirdLife Australian bird of the year will be announced at 12.30pm AEDT on this website, after voters culled a field of 50 down to 10 for the final day of voting on Thursday.

Find all our bird of the year content

Guardian Australia has produced a glorious A3 poster of Australian birds that can be downloaded here as a high-resolution jpeg or pdf to be printed out. (The pdf is a large file so may take a while to load.)

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European co-legislators reached a provisional political agreement on Thursday to phase out by 2050 fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases), in a bid to set higher environmental standards for the rest of the world.

Investor and advisory firm Pollination has identified a series of areas where the fledgling, but fast-evolving biodiversity credit market needs or is likely to see significant developments in coming years.

Almost a year after the scheme was officially launched, Australian carbon project developer GreenCollar has announced the very first issuance of its NaturePlus Credits, which it hopes to establish as a leading global biodiversity credit type.

Ukraine's environment minister has told domestic media sources that the country must adopt a law on a national ETS as early as next year, with an aim of introducing it in 2025, to avoid any negative impact on Ukrainian exports linked to the EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism.

Mountain’s peak has been measured every two years since 2001 and height has varied by almost 5 metres

Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in the Alps, has shrunk by 2.2 metres since 2021 to its lowest height in recent memory.

The mountain, which is capped by a ridge of ice covering the rock, was measured by a team of surveyors from the Haute-Savoie regional administration, aided by a drone.

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The private sector-led Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market has named a new interim COO to succeed William McDonnell, who will join Insurance Australia Group as its new CFO.

EUAs retraced on Thursday after the prior session's gains, with energy prices also moving lower across the morning, as markets shrugged off reports that further LNG strikes at key Australian export terminals may lie ahead.

Exclusive: No regulator is monitoring scale of impact of dangerous chemicals on wildlife or public health

A toxic cocktail of damaging chemicals created by road pollution is flowing into England’s rivers and no regulator is monitoring the scale of its impact on wildlife or public health.

More than 18,000 outfalls, such as pipes, and about 7,700 soakaways managed by National Highways discharge rainwater potentially contaminated with heavy metals, hydrocarbons, microplastics and other chemicals from the main road network into rivers and on to land.

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This year is "on track" to be the warmest on record as global September temperatures surged.

The full European Parliament approved on Thursday the designation of Wopke Hoekstra as commissioner for climate action and Maros Sefcovic’s new role as executive vice-president in charge of the Green Deal.

Taiwan has eased a set of management rules for greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories to expand its of third-party emissions accreditation and verification capacity, amid growing domestic concerns over the impact of EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).

Regen Network has established an environmental stewardship credit class for sheep grazing on vineyards, with a first batch of units issued to an estate in California.