The Guardian
Aerial video shows buildings swamped by deadly floods and landslides in Japan – video
Six people died and three others were missing after heavy rain triggered floods and landslides in south-west Japan.
The Japan meteorological agency warned residents of Kyushu – one of the country’s four main islands – to stay alert for more landslides, a common hazard in mountainous areas after heavy rainfall.
Japan has been hit by unusually heavy rain and powerful typhoons in recent years, raising fears about its vulnerability to the climate crisis
Continue reading...EU to drop ban of hazardous chemicals after industry pressure
Exclusive: Leaked documents show that as little as 1% of products containing hazardous substances could be prohibited
The European Commission is poised to break a promise to outlaw all but the most essential of Europe’s hazardous chemicals, leaked documents show.
The pledge to “ban the most harmful chemicals in consumer products, allowing their use only where essential” was a flagship component of the European green deal when it was launched in 2020.
Continue reading...New North Sea oil and gas fields ‘will not meet UK’s energy needs’
Plans would only supply Britain with fossil fuels for an additional three weeks a year, analysis finds
New oil and gas fields in the North Sea would produce only enough gas to satisfy the UK’s needs for a few weeks a year, with a minimal impact on energy security, analysis has found.
Fields now under consideration would supply at most an additional three weeks of gas a year to the UK, from 2024 to 2050, even if none of the gas was exported.
Continue reading...So what does it mean to join the world’s hottest club? | Fiona Katauskas
The first rule of Climate Club? Don’t read the fine print
Continue reading...UK should press pause on deep-sea mining, Labour says
David Lammy says Labour government would join growing list of countries and multinationals opposing rush to mine the seabed
The Labour party has said the UK should back the call for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining, ahead of a crucial meeting of nations in Jamaica to decide the future of the industry.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said the Labour party was adding its voice to a growing list of countries and businesses urging that moves to start mining be halted “until and unless” there was clear scientific evidence that it could be done safely and the marine environment would be protected by new regulations.
Continue reading...Drop carbon offsetting-based environmental claims, companies urged
New guidance says carbon credits should only be used to contribute to climate mitigation
Companies should drop offsetting-based environmental claims and adopt a “climate contribution” model instead, according to a new quality standard.
In a new code of practice, the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI) has published guidance on how companies should use carbon credits as part of high-quality corporate action. It recommends that firms should disclose their emissions every year, show they are successfully meeting a science-based target aligned with the Paris agreement, and only use carbon credits to contribute to climate mitigation, moving away from claims that they have “cancelled out” their emissions by purchasing offsets.
Continue reading...A deer: famous for their antlers but why not their tails? | Helen Sullivan
In Celtic mythology they’re known as “fairy cattle”
The word deer comes from dēor and der, which in old and middle English meant, simply, “animal”. The Dutch word “dier” still means this. The sense of a deer as an animal, as opposed to a human – it has been found to have referred to ants, fish and foxes – may come from “wilddēornes”, the origin of wilderness or wild-animal-ness.
Deer still seem to embody this mysterious animal-ness: four-legged wildness, dainty and strong, mysterious and controlled. You may say it is all in the antlers: I say it is all in the tail. I saw a small herd of fallow deer in London’s Clissold park recently. A doe walked up to the fence as I walked past, then turned away and flicked her white tail: a flash of white, like a shooting star you’re not sure you’ve seen, like the tap of a fluffy wand, like a cute cursor blinking.
Continue reading...Heatwave last summer killed 61,000 people in Europe, research finds
Hottest summer on record – fuelled by climate crisis – brought unusually high mortality rates, statistics show
Searing heat killed more than 60,000 people in Europe last summer, scientists have found, in a disaster made deadlier by greenhouse gases baking the planet.
EU statisticians rang alarm bells in August, as sweltering heat, withering drought and raging fires consumed much of the continent, after seeing unusually high numbers of people die during Europe’s hottest summer on record.
Continue reading...Rangers ‘heartbroken’ after 600 dead Arctic tern chicks found in Northumberland
Bird flu suspected as cause of death of vulnerable migratory birds at Long Nanny, the biggest UK breeding colony
National Trust rangers have described their “heartbreak and worry” after recovering more than 600 dead chicks at Britain’s largest mainland colony of Arctic terns.
The trust said on Monday that Long Nanny, on the coast of Northumberland, had been hit by a suspected outbreak of avian flu during the peak of the breeding season.
Continue reading...UK should quit ‘climate-wrecking’ energy treaty, say official advisers
Climate Change Committee recommends leaving energy charter treaty, which critics say is ‘weaponised’ by fossil fuel firms
The UK should quit a controversial energy treaty to stop it delaying vital climate action and triggering huge taxpayer payouts to fossil fuel companies, according to the government’s official advisers.
The energy charter treaty (ECT) is a system of secret courts that enables companies to sue governments over policies that would cut their future profits. Companies have sued over phasing out coal-fired power stations, ending offshore oil drilling and banning fracking. The UK’s Climate Change Committee said Britain should withdraw from the ECT because recently proposed reforms did not go far enough.
Continue reading...Safety concerns for chicks grow as birds build nests with rubbish, study shows
Almost 200 bird species found to build nests with human litter, including cigarette butts, plastic bags and fishing nets
Birds build nests with rubbish like cigarette butts, plastic bags and fishing nets, scientists say, raising fears for the safety of their chicks.
Research shows 176 bird species have been found to build nests with human litter, including items that hurt them and their offspring.
Continue reading...‘Fear is motivating’ says Chris Packham as BBC series re-creates past extinction event
Earth draws parallels between human impact on climate and volcanic eruptions that ripped through planet’s crust 250 million years ago
The “terror factor” generated by the new BBC series Earth – which re-creates a climate change event that wiped out most species 250 million years ago – could help “spur us on to do something” about the environment crisis, according to its presenter, Chris Packham.
Using the latest scientific discoveries and visual effects, the BBC’s “biography of Earth” shows the parallels between a deadly change in the atmosphere caused by a series of cataclysmic supervolcano eruptions millions of years ago and mankind’s fossil fuel emissions, which Packham explains are “destabilising … with terrifying rapidity” Earth’s protective layer of gases.
Continue reading...Labour’s plan to insulate more homes ‘would create 4m job opportunities’
Scheme aims to raise standard of insulation in 19m of the UK’s leakiest homes
Labour has said that job opportunities for almost 4 million workers would be created under its plan to bring 19m of the UK’s leakiest homes up to an acceptable standard of insulation.
While it has previously said that the plan would reduce annual household energy bills by up to £500, the party has set out details of what it said would be a major expansion of the retrofitting workforce.
Continue reading...Just Stop Oil applauds Osborne wedding protest but denies responsibility
Group thanks woman who threw confetti at former chancellor’s wedding but urges people to focus on ‘out of control’ global heating
Just Stop Oil has applauded a woman who threw orange confetti at the wedding of the ex-chancellor George Osborne but denied that it, as a campaign group, was responsible.
The protest took place as Osborne and his bride Thea Rogers left a church in the village of Bruton, Somerset on Saturday.
Continue reading...Australia’s annual plastic consumption produces emissions equivalent to 5.7m cars, analysis shows
Plastics consumed nationally in 2019-20 created 16m tonnes of greenhouse gases, report says
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The plastics consumed yearly by Australians have a greenhouse emissions impact equivalent to 5.7m cars – more than a third of the cars on Australia’s roads, new analysis suggests.
A report commissioned by the Australian Marine Conservation Society and WWF Australia has found that the plastics consumed nationally in the 2019-20 financial year created 16m tonnes of greenhouse gases.
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Continue reading...Just Stop Oil protester throws orange confetti over George Osborne after wedding – video
A protester from the environmental group Just Stop Oil disrupted the wedding of the former chancellor George Osborne on Saturday. Footage showed the protester throwing orange confetti over Osborne and his wife, Thea Rogers, as they walked out of St Mary's Church in the Somerset village of Bruton. The protester followed the couple and continued to empty the confetti from a union jack bag over them until she was chased away by a security guard. About 200 people, including well-known politicians and journalists, were attending the wedding
Continue reading...The planet warms, the world economy cools – the real global recession is ecological | Larry Elliott
Governments focus on the climate when they have few other economic worries. That can no longer be the case
First it was the pandemic. Then it was the war in Ukraine. Next it could be the climate crisis.
On Monday last week the world registered its hottest-ever day but the record lasted only 24 hours before it was beaten by an even-more sizzling Tuesday. And while the temperature continues to warm up the global economy continues to cool down.
Continue reading...False hope is even worse than no hope. Labour won’t make promises it can’t keep | Wes Streeting
Tory mismanagement of public finances will make the party’s task difficult if it wins power, and that is why we won’t pledge what we can’t deliver on
• Read more: Keir Starmer’s Labour is preparing for power
Friday in my constituency summed up for me the state of our country. Local headteachers I respect and admire were in tears as they described the challenges they are grappling with. The owner of a popular local chippy showed me his energy bill, up from £5,000 a quarter to £11,000, as he shared his fears for his business. A parent showed me a photo of his straight-A son beaten black and blue in the middle of his GCSEs and shared his frustration that he has put more work into the investigation than the police.
People are increasingly looking to Labour to get Britain out of this mess. Last week Keir Starmer set out the fifth of Labour’s five missions for government: to smash the class ceiling that holds back kids from working-class backgrounds like mine. Taken together with our ambition to build an NHS fit for the future out of the ashes of the worst crisis in its history, to make our streets safe, to deliver clean power by 2030 and to get our economy racing ahead of the world, with the benefits shared so that we’re all better off, Keir’s missions amount to an ambitious vision of what our country can look like in the 2030s.
Continue reading...It’s not just the Bank of England feeling the heat from wrong forecasts | Torsten Bell
Economic forecasting is not having a good time. Inflation has consistently come in higher than expected and the governor of the Bank of England has admitted “there are big lessons about how we operate”. MPs and others have been highly critical and an external review of the Bank’s forecasting approach has been commissioned.
But it’s not just economists in the forecasting business. Indeed, new research takes the “rubbish forecasts” heat off them by focusing instead on rather more famous forecasters: meteorologists. Predictions of sun or rain, rather than GDP or inflation, are understandably much more important parts of our daily lives.
Continue reading...Missed all our net zero targets? No sweat. Rishi Sunak is totally, 100% on it | Gaia Vince
Rishi Sunak is focused on the big stuff, or what he repeatedly insists are our priorities: boats, economy, boats, hospital waiting lists, boats, inflation, boats. The naysayers would uncharitably point out that he’s failing, to which I repeat the PM’s own words: “I’m totally, 100% on it and it’s going to be OK.”
In this Mr Big Stuff vein on Tuesday it was reported that Sunak and his home secretary, Suella Braverman, would be meeting sports supremos and senior police in an effort to save the great British sporting summer from climate activists. Later that day, three sexagenarian Just Stop Oil protesters brought a couple of tennis matches to a standstill by sprinkling confetti and jigsaw pieces on court. One sporting supremo, at least, was philosophical: ‘‘You don’t want things to be disrupted but at the same time they will really be disrupted with climate change,” said Gary Lineker. Advantage activists.
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