The Guardian

Critics concerned energy department decision on fledgling technology will undermine efforts to phase out fossil fuels

The US energy department has announced it is awarding up to $1.2bn to two projects to directly remove carbon dioxide from the air, a fledgling technology that some climate experts worry will distract and undermine efforts to phase out fossil fuels.

The process, known as direct air capture, does not yet exist on a meaningful scale, and the move was being seen as the US government taking a big bet coming after July was confirmed as the hottest month ever recorded on its surface.

Unprecedented wildfires burning on the Hawaiian island of Maui have killed at least 53 people, displaced thousands of residents and destroyed parts of a centuries-old town. The disaster is one of the deadliest US wildfires in recent years. The fast-moving fires, fanned by the winds of a distant hurricane, exploded overnight and moved so quickly that some residents jumped into the ocean to escape the flames and smoke. Crews are continuing to battle the blazes, which have burned through multiple neighbourhoods, including the historic town of Lahaina

At least 55 people have died after wildfires engulfed the historic town of Lahaina on Maui island, Hawaii. Experts say rising global temperatures and drought have fanned the flames in one of the deadliest fires in modern US history. The devastation was exacerbated by strong winds from a nearby cyclone. Wildfires in Hawaii are burning through four times the area of previous decades, studies show

• Devastating Hawaii fires made ‘much more dangerous’ by climate change

• Hawaii fires – latest updates

Her withdrawal from the Edinburgh book festival was a blow to the event, and raises questions about how best to demand change

The Edinburgh international book festival opens on Saturday. I will be there, but it will go ahead without its headline event, one that would have seen 3,000 climate activists and readers gather to hear Greta Thunberg speak. The environmental campaigner cancelled just over a week before she was due to appear, after a piece in the Scottish online investigative journal the Ferret pointed out that the festival’s main sponsor, fund manager Baillie Gifford, invests in companies connected with fossil fuels. “Greenwashing efforts by the fossil fuel industry, including sponsorship of cultural events, allow them to keep the social licence to continue operating,” she said in a statement.

It points to a wider narrative: the story of many cultural organisations across the UK over the past decade has been an increasing reliance on sponsorship and donors – especially in England, where private funding has been touted by Tory ministers as the answer to the ideologically motivated austerity cuts of 2010 onwards, a situation that has become more acute since the depredations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The result, though, has been problem piled upon ethical problem. Some organisations have found themselves rapidly untangling themselves from Russian money. (Tate, for example, severed ties last March with sanctioned Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, removing the former donor from an honorary position after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.)

Figures reveal capacity has fallen to an average rise of 4.45% in past three years, compared with 9.67% globally

The UK’s investment in renewable energy has lagged significantly behind the rest of the world in recent years, according to an analysis of global data.

The latest government figures reveal the UK’s renewable capacity has fallen to an average increase of 4.45% in the past three years, compared with an average 9.67% annual increase globally.

Humans have failed to keep numbers down. Reintroduce these predators, and let them get on with the job

What’s missing from this picture? I mean the picture of rural Britain many of us hold in our heads, whether it be a thatched and mullioned idyll, or the bare hills fetishised by naive nature writers? Well, quite a lot. Trees in the uplands; soft boundaries between habitats (ecotones) that are crucial for thriving food webs; dead wood, of which there’s a dearth in this country; scrub (a vital but derided habitat); undrained wetlands; and wild, healthy rivers. But there’s something else, something whose absence is less visible but just as important. Wolves.

Not just wolves, but any large or middling terrestrial predators. We talk here of wolves and lynx as “top” predators. But our native top predators, until modern humans finished them off, were lions, hyenas, bears and scimitar cats. Wolves and lynx would better be described as mesopredators. The wolf that didn’t howl helps solve the mystery of how this country, for all its love of nature, remains one of the most ecologically barren places on Earth.

Extreme weather fuelled by climate crisis and bacterial disease have led to ‘dramatic decline’ in orange crops

Orange juice prices are expected to rise further in the US after a bacterial disease and extreme weather intensified by global heating ravaged this season’s crop of the citrus fruit.

Last year Florida, which produces more than 90% of the US’s orange juice supply, was hit by Hurricane Ian, Hurricane Nicole and freezing conditions in quick succession, devastating orange producers in the Sunshine State.

North of continent records unusually wet and windy summer conditions while Portugal and Spain battle flames

Floods struck northern and central Europe last week. Some areas of Slovenia recorded more than 200mm of rain in 12 hours on Thursday and Friday, causing extensive flooding across two-thirds of the country. Many buildings and roads were damaged, at an estimated cost of €500m (£432m), and six deaths were reported.

Storm Hans hit the Baltic region a few days later. Hans originated as an area of low pressure over eastern Europe, but quickly deepened as it travelled northwards towards the Baltic Sea. The low was unusually deep for a summer storm, and led to daily rainfall totals of 80 to 100mm in parts of southern Norway and Sweden earlier this week.

DNA technology confirmed Talpa hakkariensis and Talpa davidiana tatvanensis as distinct from other moles

Scientists have identified two types of mole that they believe have been living undiscovered in Turkey.

DNA technology confirmed the creatures were biologically distinct from other moles. Both inhabit mountainous regions in eastern Turkey and can survive in temperatures of up to 50C (122F) in summer and under 2 metres (about 6ft) of snow in winter.

We need a croc in every pool. An orca in every marina!

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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a waving seal pup, a hi-tech turtle and an overheated barn owl

Scientists stunned by unprecedented heat-stress event say they can only hope it ‘motivates and unites people’

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Corals across several countries are bleaching and dying en masse from unprecedented levels of heat stress, prompting fears that an unfolding tragedy in Central America, North America and the Caribbean could become a global event.

US government scientists have confirmed reefs in Panama, Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Mexico and six countries in the Caribbean, including the Bahamas and Cuba, are suffering significant bleaching, alongside corals in Florida that began turning white almost a month ago.

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A mass coral bleaching event has hit reefs in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Scientists in the region have told Guardian Australia's environment reporter Graham Readfearn they have never seen anything like it before. The tragedy is unfolding early in the season and in areas not usually affected by coral bleaching, sparking fears it could become a global event

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From air-purified penthouses and private jets, a wealthy anti-green lobby feigns common cause with ‘ordinary people’. Let’s expose that

In Britain and far beyond, anti-environmentalists have a new favourite argument. No longer able to claim the climate crisis isn’t happening, they have switched from denial to class warfare. They argue that green policies and innovations from electric cars to heat pumps, low emission zones to eco-taxes and levies, are all unaffordable for working-class and many middle-class people, yet are being imposed regardless by an out-of-touch elite of politicians, bureaucrats and wealthy “woke capitalists”.

Most of the people making these arguments in the rightwing media were never previously much troubled by the financial struggles of what they now piously call “ordinary people”. But shamelessly shifting position is a familiar activity for the modern right. Meanwhile the cost of living crisis has given its anti-green message more force.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Comcare announces department has been charged and may be fined $1.5m for allegedly failing to properly train personnel

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Australia’s Department of Defence could be given a $1.5m fine for failing to properly train its personnel after two of its soldiers were mauled by a crocodile.

The federal government’s workplace watchdog, Comcare, announced on Friday the department had been charged for failing its duties under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011.

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Team converts polyethylene into fatty acids, soap’s main ingredient, but say it is not panacea for plastic pollution

Scientists have discovered a method to give new life to old plastic – by converting it into soap.

Plastics are chemically similar to fatty acids, which are one of the main ingredients in soap. For Guoliang Liu, an associate professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech and author of the paper published in the journal Science, this similarity suggested it should be possible to convert polyethylene into fatty acids, and then into soap. The problem was size: molecularly, plastics are very large, about 3,000 carbon atoms long, whereas fatty acids are much smaller.

Hot natural weather pattern will exacerbate heat-related dangers brought about by climate crisis

The return of El Niño against the backdrop of the climate crisis will hurt people’s health in many parts of the world, scientists have warned.

The hot natural weather pattern is back after three years of its cooler sister, La Niña, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed last month. As it grows stronger, scientists fear it will raise the risk in some countries of hunger, drought and malaria.

Exclusive: Joint chiefs of charity accuse ministers of pursuing culture wars as extreme weather becomes the norm

• ‘You have adopted a bunker mentality’: letter to Sunak
• Cancelling Greenpeace contradicts Tory free-speech pledge

Rishi Sunak’s government will “go down in history” as the administration that failed the UK on the climate crisis while ministers pursued a dangerous culture war, the heads of Greenpeace have said.

The charity’s joint executive directors described government briefings against the organisation in the wake of its oil protest at the prime minister’s Yorkshire home as “really dark stuff”, which revealed a worrying trend towards exploiting environmental protests as a wedge issue.

Open letter criticises government for stonewalling environmental group after protest at prime minister’s house

• Sunak will go down in history as failing UK on climate, Greenpeace says
• Cancelling Greenpeace contradicts Tory free-speech pledge but suits anti-Labour campaign

The co-executive directors of Greenpeace, Areeba Hamid and Will McCallum, have written an open letter to the prime minister expressing their concern over the government’s ‘reluctance to engage’ with Greenpeace.

Here is their letter in full: