The Guardian

Zoo welcomes 11 Humboldt chicks, its highest number in a decade, with previous arrivals named after crisps

In previous years Chester zoo’s new penguin chicks have been named after crisps – Frazzle, Wotsit – and local football club owners – Ryan, Rob – but the names p … p … p … picked this year are notably less frivolous.

“We’ve decided to go with plants,” said Zoe Sweetman, the penguins and parrots team manager at the zoo. Two of the spikier new arrivals have been named Nettle and Thistle while two others with “colourful personalities” have been named Daffodil and Tulip.

EPA says proposal to keep Hunter Valley Operations mines going to 2050 would release almost 30m tonnes of CO2

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The New South Wales environment watchdog says a plan to extend the life of a Hunter Valley coal-mining complex to 2050 is the “largest coal-mining proposal ever put forward” in the state.

Plans by Yancoal and Glencore to keep its joint-venture Hunter Valley Operations (HVO) mines in the Upper Hunter region going would see almost 30m tonnes of CO2 released, the EPA said in a letter to the state’s planning department.

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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Negative scientific and press reports on the efficacy of carbon credit projects has led to a ‘direct pullback in buyer investment’

The market for carbon offsets shrank dramatically last year, falling from $1.9bn (£1.5bn) in 2022 to $723m in 2023, a new report has found. The drop came after a series of scientific and media reports found many offsetting schemes do nothing to mitigate the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.

The research by Ecosystem Marketplace, a nonprofit initiative that collects data about the carbon market from brokers and traders, found the market had shrunk 61%.

Campaigners suspect block on new applications for at least two years was imposed to limit burden on water firms

The government has suspended all applications for bathing water status in waterways, delaying the cleanup of rivers and coastal waters for at least two years.

River campaigners fear the block on new applications to create bathing water areas, which are regularly tested for water quality, has been introduced to stop water companies facing huge resource implications to tackle poor water quality in new bathing areas.

For many on Ghoramara, the general election is about the climate crisis and survival. The island, 150km south of Kolkata and named the ‘sinking island’ by the media, has lost nearly half its area to soil erosion in the past two decades and could disappear if a solution is not found.

As voters across India cast their ballots on issues ranging from the cost of living to jobs and religion, politicians trying to win votes in Ghoramara need to put the climate crisis to the fore as the island’s dwindling population fight to save their homes from the sea amid rising water levels and increasingly fierce storms

Meeting WHO guidelines would avoid many cases of diseases and save the NHS millions, research shows

A study has revealed that cleaning up the air in the West Midlands could prevent the early deaths of about 2,000 people a year.

If the region were to meet World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for air pollution, it could also avoid 2,000 new asthma cases, 770 new cases of heart disease, 170 new lung cancers and 650 strokes annually, the study found.

Researchers say world has enough fossil fuel projects planned to meet demand forecasts to 2050 if net zero is reached

The world has enough fossil fuel projects planned to meet global energy demand forecasts to 2050 and governments should stop issuing new oil, gas and coal licences, according to a large study aimed at political leaders.

If governments deliver the changes promised in order to keep the world from breaching its climate targets no new fossil fuel projects will be needed, researchers at University College London and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) said on Thursday.

Sudden cut in pollution in 2020 meant less shade from sun and was ‘substantial’ factor in record surface temperatures in 2023, study finds

The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big “termination shock” that is estimated have pushed the rate of global heating to double the long-term average, according to research.

Until 2020, global shipping used dirty, high-sulphur fuels that produced air pollution. The pollution particles blocked sunlight and helped form more clouds, thereby curbing global heating. But new regulations at the start of 2020 slashed the sulphur content of fuels by more than 80%.

The Nationals MP is against RM Williams owner Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest’s renewables projects – so why wear Ariats?

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Earlier today, as I was reverse Google image searching a picture of Barnaby Joyce’s feet, I wondered if I was perhaps taking this too seriously.

The National party MP has been attending parliament without his habitual RM Williams boots in protest against the owner of the classic Australian fashion brand, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, whose company Squadron Energy is building wind and solar developments across New South Wales and Queensland, including in Joyce’s electorate of New England.

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The bipartisan proposal that would remediate farms affected by toxic PFAS contamination is gaining speed in Congress

The US may soon bail out farmers whose livelihoods were destroyed by toxic PFAS “forever chemical” contamination.

The proposal for a $500m fund aims to head off a crisis for the nation’s growers and is moving through Congress amid increasing evidence that PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge used as a cheap fertilizer alternative poisoned crops and livestock. Separately, around 4,000 farms nationwide have been contaminated by PFAS from neighboring military bases.

Analysis of the carbon offset projects used by top corporations including Delta, Gucci and ExxonMobil raises concerns around their emission cuts claims

Some of the world’s most profitable – and most polluting corporations – have invested in carbon offset projects that have fundamental failings and are “probably junk”, suggesting industry claims about greenhouse gas reductions were likely overblown, according to new analysis.

Delta, Gucci, Volkswagen, ExxonMobil, Disney, easyJet, and Nestlé are among the major corporations to have purchased millions of carbon credits from climate friendly projects that are “likely junk” or worthless when it comes to offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a classification system developed by Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog

Broadscale treatment under way after nests found at Nirimba in Queensland’s south-east

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Fire ants have been found on the Sunshine Coast as the super pest continues to spread beyond a containment zone in Queensland’s south-east corner.

It’s the latest in a series of so-called outlier detections of the hyper aggressive invasive species that Australia has been fighting to eradicate for decades.

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Big tech is playing its part in reaching net zero targets, but its vast new datacentres are run at huge cost to the environment

• Mariana Mazzucato is professor of economics at UCL, and director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

When you picture the tech industry, you probably think of things that don’t exist in physical space, such as the apps and internet browser on your phone. But the infrastructure required to store all this information – the physical datacentres housed in business parks and city outskirts – consume massive amounts of energy. Despite its name, the infrastructure used by the “cloud” accounts for more global greenhouse emissions than commercial flights. In 2018, for instance, the 5bn YouTube hits for the viral song Despacito used the same amount of energy it would take to heat 40,000 US homes annually.

This is a hugely environmentally destructive side to the tech industry. While it has played a big role in reaching net zero, giving us smart meters and efficient solar, it’s critical that we turn the spotlight on its environmental footprint. Large language models such as ChatGPT are some of the most energy-guzzling technologies of all. Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facilities. It is hardly news that the tech bubble’s self-glorification has obscured the uglier sides of this industry, from its proclivity for tax avoidance to its invasion of privacy and exploitation of our attention span. The industry’s environmental impact is a key issue, yet the companies that produce such models have stayed remarkably quiet about the amount of energy they consume – probably because they don’t want to spark our concern.

Mariana Mazzucato is professor of economics at UCL, and director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Exclusive: Five facilities named in documents tabled in NSW parliament defend practices, as independent experts question whether testing system is failing consumers

• Recycling fill sold in Sydney stores tests positive for asbestos
• Big waste companies broke rules on testing for contamination
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Facilities belonging to some of the leading commercial laboratory companies in Australia were among those that retested samples of landscaping products at the request of their waste company clients, after initial tests found contamination not compliant with NSW laws.

Guardian Australia revealed earlier this year the testing regime meant to limit toxic chemicals in landscaping material known as “recovered fines” had been compromised by the practice of waste companies asking private laboratories to retest samples until they passed.

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New study published in Cell Reports Sustainability finds emission reductions provided $249bn of climate and health benefits

By increasing its use of renewable energy, the US has not only slashed its planet-warming emissions but also improved its air quality, yielding hundreds of billions of dollars of benefits, a new report has found.

The study, published in Cell Reports Sustainability on Wednesday and based on publicly available data, focuses on uptick of renewable energy in the US from 2019 to 2022.

Hundreds of Indian farmers who have been camping for more than 100 days between the Punjab and Haryana states to demand better prices for their crops have been enduring a savage heat wave sweeping swathes of northern India.

Temperatures in Delhi, not far from the protest, have hit a record high of 49.9C (121.8F), as authorities warned of water shortages in the capital

• Delhi temperature hits 49.9C as India’s capital records hottest day

• Record breaking heat hits Delhi – in pictures

Officials are now incentivizing testing, but experts say workers need protective equipment and paid sick leave to prevent further spread

On a US dairy farm, working in the milking parlor can mean seven-day weeks, 12-hour shifts and intimate contact with cows and everything they expel.

“When you disconnect the machine from the udder, it can shoot milk in your face,” said José Martínez, a former dairy worker and United Farm Workers advocate based in Washington state. “And there’s no time or place to eat. So we ate our tacos in spare moments with cow shit on our hands.”

Widening government-run scheme would counter mistrust among householders, says consumer group

The next government should force all tradespeople who install home heat pumps, solar panels and insulation to sign up to a mandatory accreditation scheme to counter mistrust in the industry, a leading consumer group is demanding.

A report from Which? found that households face “significant anxiety” in choosing tradespeople to fit low-carbon heating systems, such as heat pumps, and insulation after “press stories about poor work and rogue traders”.

Minister says ‘it’s illegal’ after Guardian revelations of contaminated products on sale in stores, but Greens say it’s ‘obvious’ new laws not enough

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The NSW government is “very concerned” that asbestos has been found in landscaping soil bought in Sydney, the environment minister has said.

A Guardian Australia investigation revealed this week that contaminated soil fill products were on sale at landscape and garden stores, a decade after NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) investigators first raised concerns about potential contamination.

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