The Guardian

Analysis shows alarming prevalence of harmful fishing methods thought to ‘destroy whole ecosystems’

Industrial vessels suspected of using a harmful fishing method known as bottom trawling spent more than 33,000 hours in British marine protected areas last year, a new analysis of satellite data shows.

Ten of these vessels, primarily from the EU, were responsible for a quarter of this activity in offshore protected areas, according to Oceana UK, a conservation group.

Greenhouse gases from sector could make up 44% of continent’s total output by 2030, says transport group

The failure to tackle Europe’s “runaway” transport emissions could lead to the sector pumping out nearly half of the continent’s planet-heating pollution by 2030, a report has found.

Driven by polluting cars and pushed higher by the growing thirst for flights, transport emissions in Europe have grown 26% since 1990 – even as efforts to clean up other areas of the economy have led to an overall emissions fall.

Ambulance officers treated the man, believed to have been bitten by an eastern brown snake, but he died later in Townsville hospital

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A man has died in hospital after being bitten multiple times by a snake in north Queensland.

Queensland ambulance service paramedics were called to a Deeragun property after 3pm on Tuesday. The man was in a critical condition and had sustained “multiple” snake bites at a separate address. He was taken to Townsville hospital but later died.

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WARNING: contains images some viewers may find distressing

Footage supplied to Guardian Australia shows koalas clinging to falling blue gums as logging occurs on Kangaroo Island in South Australia. The footage was taken across two days in November 2023 and January 2024. Logging has been stopped while an investigation takes place.

• Investigation into logging on Kangaroo Island under way after release of ‘horrific images’ of dead koalas

Climate Change Committee finds Scottish government has repeatedly failed to make cuts required by law

Scotland’s pledge to cut its climate emissions by 75% by 2030 is “no longer credible” and cannot be met, the UK’s climate watchdog has said.

In a damning report submitted to the Scottish parliament, the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) accused the Scottish government of repeatedly failing to live up to its legally binding targets.

Shadow chancellor to use annual Mais lecture to set out plans to green the economy if party wins election

A Labour government will make fighting global heating a priority for the Bank of England as it seeks to put environmental sustainability at the heart of its plans to grow the economy, Rachel Reeves is to announce.

The shadow chancellor will say in a speech in London on Tuesday evening that if Labour wins the general election she will reverse Jeremy Hunt’s decision last year to downgrade the emphasis on the climate crisis in Threadneedle Street’s main objectives.

Records being broken for greenhouse gas pollution, surface temperatures and ocean heat

The world has never been closer to breaching the 1.5C (2.7F) global heating limit, even if only temporarily, the United Nations’ weather agency has warned.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed on Tuesday that 2023 was the hottest year on record by a wide margin. In a report on the climate, it found that records were “once again broken, and in some cases smashed” for key indicators such as greenhouse gas pollution, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover and glacier retreat.

Neither the Tories nor Labour seem bothered by the climate mayhem that awaits us, but to save lives they must act

It’s the August bank holiday in 2050 and the UK is sweltering under the worst heatwave on record. Temperatures across much of England have topped 40C for eight days running: they peaked at 46C, and remain above 30C in cities and large towns at night. The country’s poorly insulated homes feel like furnaces, and thousands of people have resorted to camping out at night in the streets and local parks in a desperate attempt to find sleep. Hospital A&Es are overwhelmed and wards are flooded with patients, mostly old and vulnerable people who have succumbed to dehydration and heatstroke. Already, the death toll is estimated at more than 80,000.

No, this isn’t the beginning of a dystopian drama, but a snapshot of a mid-century heatwave unless we prepare for the increasingly extreme weather that will be driven by climate breakdown. To say that the government has no credible plan for this, as the UK Climate Change Committee did last week, is – if anything – an understatement. Britain is woefully underprepared for extreme weather, and in a number of key areas we are going backwards. About one in 15 of England’s most important flood defences were in a poor or very poor condition in 2022, up from roughly one in 25 just four years previously. The government’s Great British insulation scheme is operating at such a slow pace that it would take nearly 200 years to upgrade the country’s housing stock, while Labour has rowed back on its ambitious plans to insulate 19m homes within a decade.

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL, and the author of Hothouse Earth: an Inhabitant’s Guide

The CSIRO says it only received $1m over the last ten years to combat the highly invasive pests despite pioneering research into their management

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Australia’s leading scientific research body received just $100,000 a year towards combatting fire ants, a Senate inquiry into the highly invasive pests has heard.

At the third and final session of public hearings for the Senate inquiry on Monday, the committee’s chair, Senator Matt Canavan, said some of the evidence he had heard had “freaked [him] out”.

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How can we expect people to care for the countryside if they are denied access to it? We must fight for our right to roam

When people ask me where I’m from, I wryly tell them “the middle of nowhere”. So, imagine my surprise when I saw that my old landlord and the remote place where I grew up were making national headlines over a court battle for the right to wild camp on Dartmoor.

Alexander Darwall bought the 1,619-hectare (4,000-acre) Blachford estate on southern Dartmoor in 2011. Dartmoor is the only place in England where wild camping is allowed, in designated areas, without permission from a landowner. Darwall successfully contested this right in court, arguing that the right to wild camp – as opposed to walking or picnicking – on the moors never existed. Then an appeal restored it. Now, he’s taking the case to the supreme court.

Court of appeal’s removal of ‘consent’ defence means defendants on trial for criminal damage can no longer use it

It took a matter of minutes in the court of appeal, where demonstrators were strangely absent, for the dial to shift once more on the rights of protest in England and Wales.

The decision taken on Monday by the court of appeal to, in effect, find in favour of the attorney general, the Conservative government’s premier legal officer, has removed a defence for climate protesters that had been available on the statute books since 1971.

Almost all countries failing to meet mark for PM2.5, tiny particles expelled by vehicles and industry that can cause health problems

Only seven countries are meeting an international air quality standard, with deadly air pollution worsening in places due to a rebound in economic activity and the toxic impact of wildfire smoke, a new report has found.

Of 134 countries and regions surveyed in the report, only seven – Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and New Zealand – are meeting a World Health Organization (WHO) guideline limit for tiny airborne particles expelled by cars, trucks and industrial processes.

We should focus on rooftop solar – Australians love it

A missing element from much of the debate about whether Australia should embrace nuclear power is that – unless the Labor rank-and-file have an extraordinary change of heart – the issue is already dead on arrival.

John Howard and Scott Morrison knew the score on this. Unless there is bipartisan support, a nuclear industry has virtually no chance of being developed. And as things stand there is no chance of the ALP changing its position.

Labour shadow energy minister will use speech to say Tory approach is also leading to higher bills

Ministers are stoking the fires of the culture wars over the UK’s net zero target instead of addressing the urgency of the climate crisis, Ed Miliband will say.

The shadow energy secretary will make a pitch directly to Conservative voters who are concerned that the party has made major U-turns on cutting greenhouse gas emissions amid increasingly anti-green rhetoric.

China’s Longi looks to slash costs as renewable energy sector faces tough headwinds from inflation

The world’s largest solar manufacturer has slashed nearly a third of its workforce after a cost-cutting drive that included telling staff to only print in black and white fell short and as a chill ripples through the renewable energy sector.

China’s Longi is to cut as much as 30% of its workforce, in an acceleration of cost reductions that began late last year, Bloomberg reported.

Appeal court says defendants’ ‘beliefs and motivation’ do not constitute lawful excuse for damaging property

One of the last defences for climate protesters who commit criminal damage has been in effect removed by the court of appeal. The court said the “beliefs and motivation” of a defendant do not constitute lawful excuse for causing damage to a property.

The defence that a person honestly believes the owner of a property would have consented had they known the full circumstances of climate change has been used successfully over the last year by protesters.

Academic experts also criticise UN Food and Agriculture Organization for dismissing alternative proteins

The omission of meat-eating reduction from proposals in a UN roadmap to tackle the climate crisis and end hunger is “bewildering”, according to academic experts.

The group also criticised the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s report for “dismissing” the potential of alternative proteins, such as plant-based meat, to reduce the impact of livestock on the environment.

Greenpeace has called for the creation of a high seas protected zone under a new UN treaty to secure a much wider area around Ecuador’s Galapagos archipelago, whose unique fauna and flora inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

Perhaps our government imagines bulldog spirit will protect us from the dangerous substances that Europe rules unsafe

It’s a benefit of Brexit – but only if you’re a manufacturer or distributor of toxic chemicals. For the rest of us, it’s another load we have to carry on behalf of the shysters and corner-cutters who lobbied for the UK to leave the EU.

The government insisted on a separate regulatory system for chemicals. At first sight, it’s senseless: chemical regulation is extremely complicated and expensive. Why replicate an EU system that costs many millions of euros and employs a small army of scientists and administrators? Why not simply adopt as UK standards the decisions it makes? After all, common regulatory standards make trading with the rest of Europe easier. Well, now we know. A separate system allows the UK to become a dumping ground for the chemicals that Europe rules unsafe.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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