The Guardian

Means to stop catastrophic global heating exist, says UN chief, but political courage is needed to end world’s fossil fuel addiction

The huge cuts in carbon emissions now needed to end the climate crisis mean it is “crunch time for real”, according to the UN’s environment chief.

An unprecedented global mobilisation of renewable energy, forest protection and other measures is needed to steer the world off the current path towards a catastrophic temperature rise of 3.1C, a report from the UN environment programme (Unep) has found. Extreme heatwaves, storms, droughts and floods are already ravaging communities with less than 1.5C of global heating to date.

More than 30m homes are thought to contain lead paint, including nearly 4m where children under age of six live

Two weeks after setting a nationwide deadline for removal of lead pipes, the Biden administration is imposing strict new limits on dust from lead-based paint in older homes and childcare facilities.

A final rule announced on Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency sets limits on lead dust on floors and window sills in pre-1978 residences and childcare facilities to levels so low they cannot be detected.

Pace of growth helps maintain renewable energy when weather conditions interfere with wind and solar

Faced with worsening climate-driven disasters and an electricity grid increasingly supplied by intermittent renewables, the US is rapidly installing huge batteries that are already starting to help prevent power blackouts.

From barely anything just a few years ago, the US is now adding utility-scale batteries at a dizzying pace, having installed more than 20 gigawatts of battery capacity to the electric grid, with 5GW of this occurring just in the first seven months of this year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Just designating key areas will not meet 30x30 target on nature loss, study says, pointing to oil drilling in parks

Biodiversity is declining more quickly within key protected areas than outside them, according to research that scientists say is a “wake-up call” to global leaders discussing how to stop nature loss at the UN’s Cop16 talks in Colombia.

Protecting 30% of land and water for nature by 2030 was one of the key targets settled on by world leaders in a landmark 2022 agreement to save nature – and this month leaders are gathering again at a summit in the Colombian city of Cali to measure progress and negotiate new agreements to stop biodiversity loss.

Plant enthusiast Darren Williams made the discovery in Marys Creek State Forest just west of Gympie in Queensland. The male platypus was freshly killed, probably after what would have been a fierce struggle with the ambush predator. Williams and his companion Elliot Bowerman photographed the roughly 2-metre long carpet python with its jaw firmly clasped around the platypus before quickly moving on. 'We didn’t want to disturb the snake,' Bowerman said

• ‘There is a python with a platypus in its mouth: botanist’s extreme monotreme v reptile encounter

RHS says ensuring access to green space as part of housebuilding push could make Britons healthier

Requirements for gardens and the planting of trees must be included in Labour’s planned new rules for housebuilders, green groups have said.

The government is drawing up its future homes standard for new developments and it is not yet clear what requirements there will be for green space.

US firm Wolfspeed and German car parts supplier ZF postpone plans over doubts over viability

A project to build a €3bn factory making microchips for electric vehicles once hailed as part of a “return of the industrial revolution” in Germany has been put on hold, as the crisis in the country’s hi-tech manufacturing industry deepened.

US company Wolfspeed and German car parts supplier ZF have postponed plans to build an EV chip factory, adding to problems caused by a delay to two large-scale factories by US chip giant Intel and potential factory closures being considered by German carmaker Volkswagen.

Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg told the US cable host its biggest threat was not the climate crisis, but do his claims stack up?

• Great Barrier Reef’s worst bleaching leaves giant coral graveyard: ‘It looks as if it has been carpet bombed’
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Instead of an existential crisis for species worldwide, or threatening to submerge entire Pacific nations and coastal cities where hundreds of millions of people live, or a phenomenon driving unprecedented heatwaves and wildfires, the climate crisis was characterised somewhat differently on major US cable show Real Time with Bill Maher.

Climate change was “a problem”, Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg told comedian Maher, but would only shave a few percentage points off global GDP by the end of the century and in any case, he claimed, by then people would be much richer anyway.

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Greens MP says number of mortalities is ‘enormous’ and ‘most likely the result of overstocking’

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Environmentalists are calling on the Tasmanian salmon industry to explain why more than 1,000 tonnes of salmon died in fish farms in Macquarie Harbour over seven months last spring and summer.

A government document published after a request by the Neighbours of Fish Farming, a group that campaigns against commercial salmon operations, suggest 1,150 tonnes of fish died in farms in the vast harbour on the state’s west coast between September and March.

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Oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf explains why Amoc breakdown could be catastrophic for both humans and marine life

The dangers of a collapse of the main Atlantic Ocean circulation, known as Amoc, have been “greatly underestimated” and would have devastating and irreversible impacts, according to an open letter released at the weekend by 44 experts from 15 countries. One of the signatories, Stefan Rahmstorf, an oceanographer and climatologist who heads the Earth system analysis department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, explains here why he has recently upgraded his risk assessment of an Amoc breakdown as a result of global heating – and what that means for Britain, Europe and the wider world.

Long-delayed regulations may ‘encourage’ housebuilders to equip homes with solar panels, rather than requiring them

Labour is considering making solar panels optional on new homes in England, after pressure from housebuilders, in a move that would weaken low-carbon regulations, the Guardian has learned.

Ministers are preparing to publish long-delayed regulations for new homes, known as the future homes standard, which would ensure that all newly built homes are low-carbon.

For over a century the villagers of Barekuri, north-east India’s biodiversity hotspot, have coexisted with the country’s only ape species, the hoolock gibbon. But this harmony stands in fragile ecological balance. Mohit Chutia, a 55-year-old farmer and father, has been taking care of one gibbon family while raising his own. When researcher Ishika Ramakrishna arrives to study human-gibbon interactions, she joins forces with Mohit and the villagers to tackle the gibbons' urgent population decline, endangered by habitat loss, deforestation and industrial catastrophe

Exclusive: Those with ‘interest in keeping world hooked on fossil fuels’ should not oversee climate talks, say report authors

Azerbaijan, the host of the Cop29 global climate summit, will see a large expansion of fossil gas production in the next decade, a new report has revealed. The authors said that the crucial negotiations should not be overseen by “those with a vested interest in keeping the world hooked on fossil fuels”.

Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, and its partners are set to raise the country’s annual gas production from 37bn cubic metres (bcm) today to 49bcm by 2033. Socar also recently agreed to increase gas exports to the European Union by 17% by 2026.

The state Labor government is steering Australia’s climate policy, letting emissions soar unbridled as it paves the way for massive fossil fuel projects

Western Australia sometimes feels more than three hours behind the rest of the country.

The tyranny of our distance has always meant it’s been hard to get the attention of the east coast.

A sulphur-crested cockatoo named Mickey that had been 'living on brioche' inside a Sydney supermarket for four weeks has been captured by wildlife services and is expected to be set free soon. On Tuesday morning, another cockatoo, Old Lady Doris, was taken into the supermarket by the Feathered Friends bird rescue director Ravi Wasan to comfort the lost bird, allowing Wasan to successfully capture him. Wasan said Mickey looked 'physically fine' and was not hungry because he was eating 'really well' in the supermarket. The NSW environment minister announced on Tuesday evening the bird had 'been safely captured by wildlife rescuers after spending way too long in Macarthur Square' shopping centre

• Cockatoo rescued after ‘living on brioche’ for four weeks inside Sydney supermarket

Comprehensive review suggests that adding more parks, trees and greenery could improve public health

Green spaces in cities play a vital role in reducing illness and deaths caused by climate breakdown, according to the most comprehensive study of its kind.

The findings of the review suggest that adding more parks, trees and greenery to urban areas could help countries tackle heat-related harms and improve public health.

Defra body, created to overhaul system amid public fury, may force firms to be run for public good rather than shareholder returns

• New water regulator must create environmental enforcer that is feared | Nils Pratley

Water companies in England could be banned from making a profit under plans for a complete overhaul of the system.

The idea is one of the options being considered by a new commission set up by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) amid public fury over the way firms have prioritised profit over the environment.

The division of responsibilities between Ofwat, the Environment Agency and Drinking Water Inspectorate hasn’t worked

• New regulator may ban English water companies from making a profit

An independent commission into the English and Welsh water sector would have been an excellent idea about 20 years ago. It is hard to pinpoint precisely when the industry went seriously off the rails but Ofwat’s infamous price review of 2004 is one starting point. That is when the undoubted gains from higher investment in the decade after privatisation in 1989 started to evaporate and the story turned into one of financial engineering and grossly inadequate regulation.

The 2004 settlement was wildly generous to the companies and kickstarted the disastrous take-private buyout boom by private equity and global infrastructure funds. Dividend extraction and “whole business securitisations” followed, tolerated by an economic regulator that, absurdly, took the view that sky-high debt levels and Cayman Islands financing vehicles were not its job to worry about.

Report also finds at least 1,344 individual birds of prey were persecuted in the UK between 2009 and 2023

More hen harriers were killed in 2023 than in any other year on record, a report has found.

The RSPB’s Birdcrime report also found that at least 1,344 individual birds of prey were persecuted in the UK between 2009 and 2023, and that 75% of people convicted of offences related to the persecution of birds of prey in that period were connected to the gamebird shooting industry.

Australia’s solar waste problem – identified as a priority by the federal government in 2016 – is becoming larger and more urgent

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In a 50m shed south of Brisbane, solar panels are being turned into silver and copper.

Photovoltaic panels no longer capable of producing electricity are having their aluminium and wires removed before being ground up and refined into plastic, glass, silicon, silver and copper. So far, nothing has gone to waste.

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