The Guardian
‘Don’t F&*! The Planet’: Atlassian issues net zero guide for companies cutting climate impact
Tech firm founded by Australians Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar says net zero must be achieved by cutting emissions by 90% and only offsetting the remainder
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As corporate reports go, the title of Aussie tech firm Atlassian’s guide for other companies to cut their greenhouse gas emissions is as direct and flavoursome as they come: “Don’t F&*! The Planet.”
The firm, founded by Australians Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, says it is already running its operations on 100% renewable electricity and has a “science-based target” to reach net zero emissions no later than 2040.
Continue reading...Ending native forest logging in Victoria is long overdue. Australia must protect its precious trees | David Lindenmayer and Chris Taylor
The state’s native forest industry will stop by the end of the year – six years ahead of schedule
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By the end of the year, Victoria’s trouble-plagued native forest industry will end – six years ahead of schedule. The state’s iconic mountain ash forests and endangered wildlife will at last be safe from chainsaws. And there will be no shortage of wood – there’s more than enough plantation timber to fill the gap.
Yesterday’s announcement by Premier Daniel Andrews is excellent news for forests, the state’s economy and its threatened species. We congratulate the Victorian government for this decision.
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David Lindenmayer is a professor at Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University. Chris Taylor is a research fellow at Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University. This article was originally published in The Conversation
Continue reading...Recycling can release huge quantities of microplastics, study finds
Scientists find high levels of microplastics in wastewater from unnamed UK plant – and in air surrounding facility
Recycling has been promoted by the plastics industry as a key solution to the growing problem of plastic waste. But a study has found recycling itself could be releasing huge quantities of microplastics.
An international team of scientists sampled wastewater from a state-of-the-art recycling plant at an undisclosed location in the UK. They found that the microplastics released in the water amounted to 13% of the plastic processed.
Continue reading...CEO of biggest carbon credit certifier to resign after claims offsets worthless
David Antonioli to step down from Verra, which was accused of approving millions of worthless offsets used by major companies
The head of the world’s leading carbon credit certifier has announced he will step down as CEO next month.
It comes amid concerns that Verra, a Washington-based nonprofit, approved tens of millions of worthless offsets that are used by major companies for climate and biodiversity commitments, according to a joint Guardian investigation earlier this year.
Continue reading...Climate activists disrupt Europe’s biggest private jet fair
Protesters from Greenpeace, Stay Grounded, Extinction Rebellion and others chain themselves to aircraft in Geneva
Dozens of climate activists have disrupted Europe’s largest private jet trade fair by chaining themselves to aircraft to protest against the sector’s carbon emissions.
The demonstrators on behalf of Greenpeace, Stay Grounded, Extinction Rebellion and Scientist Rebellion also attached themselves to the entrance gates of the event at Geneva airport in the hope of preventing prospective buyers from entering the annual show.
Continue reading...A historic deal will drastically reduce Colorado River water use. But it’s not nearly enough
An agreement between California, Arizona and Nevada will cut water consumption by 13% – but the river is still in serious peril
A hard-fought agreement between California, Arizona and Nevada to slash the states’ use of the shrinking Colorado River is only a temporary salve to a long-term water crisis that continues to threaten the foundations of life in the American west, experts have warned.
The deal, announced on Monday, between the three states that make up the lower portion of the sprawling Colorado basin will pare back 13% of water consumption from the beleaguered river over the next three years if adopted, averting the prospect of more stringent cuts imposed by the federal government. Backed by $1.2bn in federal funds, the bulk of the reductions are structured to encourage voluntary cuts taken by rights holders, in exchange for grant money.
Continue reading...Almost 400 species discovered in Greater Mekong region – in pictures
Two hundred and ninety plants, 20 fishes, 24 amphibians, 46 reptiles and one mammal were among newly discovered in one of Asia’s biodiversity hotspots in 2021 and 2022. Many are already under threat of extinction from habitat loss, deforestation and the illegal wildlife trade. WWF is calling on governments to increase protection for these rare species and to commit to halting and reversing nature loss
Continue reading...Imports of ivory from hippos, orcas and walruses to be banned in UK
Ministers to close loophole in 2018 Ivory Act that means animals other than elephants can be targeted
Ivory imports from hippopotamuses, orcas and walruses will be banned under new legislation to protect the endangered species from poaching.
The Ivory Act, passed in 2018, targeted materials from elephants, but a loophole meant that animals other than elephants, including hippos, were being targeted for their ivory.
Continue reading...Cocoa planting is destroying protected forests in west Africa, study finds
Global trade in chocolate, worth more than $1tn a year, is leading to widespread deforestation in Ivory Coast and Ghana
The world’s hunger for chocolate is a major cause of the destruction of protected forests in west Africa, scientists have said.
Satellite maps of Ivory Coast and Ghana showed swathes of formerly dense forest had become cocoa plantations since 2000, according to a study.
Continue reading...Global heating will push billions outside ‘human climate niche’
World is on track for 2.7C and ‘phenomenal’ human suffering, scientists warn
Global heating will drive billions of people out of the “climate niche” in which humanity has flourished for millennia, a study has estimated, exposing them to unprecedented temperatures and extreme weather.
The world is on track for 2.7C of heating with current action plans and this would mean 2 billion people experiencing average annual temperatures above 29C by 2030, a level at which very few communities have lived in the past.
Continue reading...English water firms want to draw a line under the past. It won’t wash | Nils Pratley
Industry wants accountability to cover putting sewage spills right, not firms’ previous compliance
“We want to be held to account …” said Ruth Kelly, the new public face of the English water companies, last week, briefly raising hopes of a moment of reckoning for the industry’s past (and current) sewage spills. Then the chair of Water UK clarified what her version of accountability covers. The companies wish to be held to account “… for putting it right”.
The past 30 years, we were invited to think, should be considered an unfortunate chapter in which the industry, terribly unfortunately, didn’t give sewage spills enough attention while other investments were prioritised. That was the gist of her apology. “By and large, the water companies were carrying out their legal responsibilities but … what’s legal is not necessarily the right answer or what people expect,” she argued on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Continue reading...Big polluters’ share prices fall after climate lawsuits, study finds
Exclusive: Fossil fuel companies register drop in value after litigation or unfavourable judgments
Climate litigation poses a financial risk to fossil fuel companies because it lowers the share price of big polluters, research has found.
A study to be published on Tuesday by LSE’s Grantham Research Institute examines how the stock market reacts to news that a fresh climate lawsuit has been filed or a corporation has lost its case.
Continue reading...America’s big shift to green energy has a woolly mammoth problem
Transmission lines in the US need to be increased threefold, but faces pushback from fossil conservation and green groups
America’s renewable energy drive needs more than a million miles of new transition lines but emerging resistance includes opponents worried about building them in one of the country’s richest areas of ice-age fossils.
The Greenlink West project would build a 470-mile-long transmission line bringing clean electricity north of Las Vegas to Reno in Nevada, but it cuts through an area containing everything from woolly mammoth tusks to giant sloths to ancient camels.
Continue reading...Weather tracker: Guam and Philippines brace for Typhoon Mawar
Typhoon projected to affect US territory of Guam as early as Tuesday. Elsewhere, Europe is heating up
Over the weekend, a rapidly intensifying region of thunderstorms in the western Pacific culminated in the formation of Typhoon Mawar.
The movement of this storm is projected to affect the Mariana Islands, including the US territory of Guam, as early as Tuesday. There is a risk of wind speeds above 75mph, together with torrential rain.
Continue reading...Why I stopped arguing about the climate emergency and tried the silent treatment instead | Helena Echlin
The sensible methods didn’t work, so I became a member of the Red Rebel Brigade. Now I feel I’m doing something useful
My clown-white facepaint makes my skin feel tight and I’m scared my elaborate headdress is going to slip. It’s my first outing with the Red Rebel Brigade, the silent climate activist performance group. About a dozen of us are clad in robes, veils and evening gloves – all a bright blood-red. We glide to our local Barclays bank to stand in a tableau of grief. We are meant to aim for the faraway stare of “a watcher through the ages”, but I’m afraid I look more like someone stuck in a slow queue at Sainsbury’s. I suddenly catch the eye of someone I know as they walk past, staring at me like I’m bonkers. But I’ve tried the sensible ways of doing something about the climate crisis. I’ve written letters to politicians, carried placards and had endless conversations. At best, I just put people’s backs up. So I’ve decided to shut up and wrap myself in a red sheet instead.
Two years before this, on the morning of 9 September 2020, I woke in my home in Berkeley, California, to a Plutonian twilight. Smoke from the latest wildfire had mixed with the fog in a blanket that shorter wavelengths of light couldn’t penetrate. I tried to explain away the darkness to my kids but I felt like a parent in biblical Egypt, claiming everything was fine while frogs rained from the sky. My husband and I had worried about California’s escalating drought and wildfires for years, but after Orange Skies Day we decided we’d had enough. Time to move back to my native UK. (Unlike millions displaced by the climate crisis, we were privileged to have this option.)
Continue reading...Young humpbacks ‘full of beans’ as whale-watching season takes off in Sydney
Up to 50,000 whales expected to pass Australia’s east coast during annual migration from Antartica to Great Barrier Reef
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Carrie Davis describes seeing her first adult humpback whale of the season launching out of the water off the coast of Sydney last week as magical.
“It’s just this feeling of awe to see this fat whale of that size get all that body out of the water,” said Davis of Go Whale Watching in Sydney. “No matter how many times you see it, it always takes your breath away.”
Continue reading...The Guardian view on England’s water companies: a badly broken system | Editorial
Ministers were warned about the risks of private equity entering the sector but did nothing. Now we’re paying the price
The revelation should anger all who care about England’s rivers and beaches. Two decades ago, ministers were warned about private equity firms buying up water companies. In a briefing prepared for Britain’s competition regulator prior to the takeover of Southern Water, researchers raised the alarm that private equity-owned water companies would become “impossible” to regulate. Despite the 20-year transparency rule, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has not released the briefing. Its existence was uncovered by this newspaper. Though its full contents remain secret, its implications are clear: ministers were alerted to the devastating impact that this industry could have on England’s water supply, but they chose not to act.
Since then, a tide of effluent has polluted England’s rivers. Following the privatisation of water companies in 1989, owners have enriched themselves while neglecting infrastructure and dumping vast quantities of untreated sewage. As investors have loaded water companies with debt, they have continued to pay dividends to their shareholders, which totalled £1.4bn last year. The public, meanwhile, have shouldered the costs. Water bills have risen. Last week, the industry apologised for these sewage spills and pledged to invest £10bn in infrastructure – to be paid for by increases in customer bills. Ruth Kelly, the former Labour cabinet minister who is head of the industry’s trade body, Water UK, said more should have been done to address the spillages. She was silent on the subject of dividend payments.
Continue reading...Can we still handle the truth? Journalism, ‘alternative facts’ and the rise of AI | Lenore Taylor
The credo of Watergate is still relevant: find the best obtainable version of the truth. But doing so is only getting more complicated
We all have moments in life when we know something big is happening, that we are stepping into a new and consequential experience, and our mind takes a mental Polaroid, an intensely clear snapshot of what that moment looks like and how it feels, and then stores it away in a file marked “important”.
Well, my mind does anyway, and in my professional life so far there have been three.
Continue reading...Green belts once served a vital purpose, but now they are squeezing the life out of cities | Rowan Moore
Imagine a reservoir of wealth, worth very many billions of pounds, a latter-day North Sea oil, lying underneath the country. One that, what’s more, is public property. What government would not want to turn it to the benefit of its favoured policies – for example to ending the nation’s eternally unsolved housing crisis, to returning to young and not-so-young people the degree of access to decent housing that former generations enjoyed?
This reservoir exists. It consists of the potential value of land that is released when planning permission is granted for housing, or other profitable development. Thanks to the postwar government of Clement Attlee, whose nationalisation of development rights is still partly unprivatised, it belongs to government. It could be extremely helpful to a future Labour administration, if it seriously wants to restore, as Keir Starmer put it last week, both economic renewal and the housing security that “working people… desperately need”.
Continue reading...Forest regeneration scheme has created area smaller than Regent’s Park
Just 192 hectares of ‘natural colonisation’ have been established in England under woodland creation offer
A government scheme to support the natural regeneration of trees has in two years created an area of new woodland smaller than Regent’s Park in London.
Just 192 hectares (474 acres) of “natural colonisation” have been established in England through the woodland creation offer, a financial support package launched by the government in May 2021 after natural regeneration was hailed as one of the cheapest, efficient and most wildlife-friendly ways of increasing tree cover and capturing carbon.
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