The Guardian
Revealed: UAE plans huge oil and gas expansion as it hosts UN climate summit
Exclusive: UAE’s fossil fuel boss will be the president of Cop28, making a mockery of the summit, say campaigners
The United Arab Emirates, which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit, has the third biggest net zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion in the world, the Guardian can reveal. Its plans are surpassed only by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The CEO of the UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc, has been controversially appointed president of the UN’s Cop28 summit in December, which is seen as crucial with time running out to end the climate crisis. But Sultan Al Jaber is overseeing expansion to produce oil and gas equivalent to 7.5bn barrels of oil, according to new data, 90% of which would have to remain in the ground to meet the net zero scenario set out by the International Energy Agency.
Continue reading...Soaring, leaping, swooping … a world of wildlife by the world’s top photographers
From the Iberian lynx to the Chilean devil ray and mountain gorilla, these stunning images by some of the world’s best nature photographers appear in The New Big 5: A Global Photography Project for Endangered Wildlife, by photographer and Guardian contributor Graeme Green. The book was borne out of a project to create a big 5 of photography rather than hunting, shooting with a camera, not a gun
Prescribed time in nature linked to improvements in anxiety, depression and blood pressure
Researchers say there are interlinked benefits across mental and physical health from prescribed time in green spaces or near bodies of water
Prescriptions encouraging people to spend more time in nature are linked to reduced blood pressure and improvements in anxiety and depression symptoms, according to new analysis.
Doctors sometimes use nature-based social prescription programs – sometimes described as “green prescriptions” or “blue prescriptions” – to advise patients to spend time in green spaces or near bodies of water.
Continue reading...England’s top beaches faced 8,500 hours of sewage dumping last year, study says
Many blue flag beaches were covered in waste, and Brighton was among the worst-hit, Lib Dem report shows
England’s most celebrated beaches faced 8,500 hours of sewage dumping last year, new figures show.
Many beaches with blue flag status– an international mark of recognition that a beach is deemed safe and has good water quality – were found to have been covered in waste over the last 12 months.
Continue reading...Tory MPs join farmers in challenge to limits on Dartmoor sheep flocks
Move to stop overgrazing harming bird habitats would ‘destroy ancient tradition’ and harm business, say MPs
Farmers and Tory MPs are joining ranks to clash with conservation authorities about the best way to look after Dartmoor national park. Parts of the national park are worryingly overgrazed, particularly by sheep, say nature experts, which is destroying habitats and putting rare birds at risk of local extinction. Breeding populations of moorland birds such as golden plover, red grouse and ring ouzels have now gone or are on the verge of being lost.
Natural England, the government nature watchdog, has advised farmers who are in agri-environment schemes and receive government money for nature friendly farming that they will have to reduce their stocks. It said that in summer, at least 50% of their livestock units should be cattle or ponies rather than sheep, and that “except for pony herds, winter grazing will need to be justified through clear and specific environmental outcomes that require winter stocking”.
Continue reading...A whale: sleeping vertically, they look like they could stop time | Helen Sullivan
Blood rushes through its veins and the whale’s enormous body shakes slightly
Blue whales are the largest animal ever to have lived – including the dinosaurs – which also makes them the largest animal ever to have slept. All that sleep! A whole whale’s worth, in vast, cold water, the ocean a closed eye, salty and dark. To watch a whale sleeping is to feel as if they have turned the world around them into sleep, that they are suspended in sleep itself, in the liquid that fills your bones when you turn off the light.
Sperm whales sleep vertically, in groups, suspended impossibly, the way an object might be suspended only in a dream. They look like planets, their orbit suddenly stopped. They look as if they could stop time. And maybe they would, if they ever slept for longer than 20 minutes, or closed both eyes.
Continue reading...BHP and Rio Tinto among Australian heavy industry calling for urgent action on cutting emissions
In joint statement companies say they are ‘ready to seize opportunity’ of decarbonisation and call on others to join them
Some of Australia’s biggest heavy industrial companies – including BHP, Bluescope, Rio Tinto and Woodside – say urgent action is needed from government, investors and business for Australia to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with its goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C.
A joint statement signed by 17 members of the Australian Industry Energy Transitions Initiative (ETI) follows their support for a report in February that found they could cut direct emissions in their supply chains by more than 90% by 2050 without relying heavily on carbon offsets.
Continue reading...Water firms to invest £1.6bn in improvements, says Ofwat
Regulator announces two-year plan in victory for campaigners pushing to clean up England’s rivers
More than £1.6bn is to be invested by water companies in England in the next two years, the regulator, Ofwat, has announced, in a victory for campaigners pushing to clean up rivers.
The investment by water companies has been brought forward to speed up projects to tackle pollution and drought.
Continue reading...I lead a litter-picking group, but I will always defend litterers. This is why | Leila Taheri
If any anger is justified, it should be directed at those who create our throwaway culture and make people’s lives a misery
Rubbish seems to be everywhere you look. As one of the leaders of a community wetlands group in north-west London, I’ve witnessed a cormorant diving into a bobbing flotilla of plastic, shores made up of plastic and a heron starving to death due to red nylon tangled around its beak.
Last month, a new disease caused solely by plastics was discovered in seabirds. And in February, our group, Friends of the Welsh Harp, removed four tonnes of rubbish from a river and the surrounding woodland. Our rivers are not only open sewers, they’re also open dustbins that lead to the sea.
Continue reading...Scientists find deepest fish ever recorded at 8,300 metres underwater near Japan
Footage of unknown snailfish captured by researchers from Western Australia and Tokyo in Izu-Ogasawara trench
Scientists have captured footage of a fish swimming more than 8km underwater, setting a new record for the deepest fish ever recorded.
The animal, an unknown snailfish species belonging to the genus Pseudoliparis, was filmed at a depth of 8,336 metres in the Izu-Ogasawara trench, south-east of Japan.
Continue reading...Yunupingu, ‘the rock that stands against time’, leaves an indelible mark in struggle for Indigenous rights
Deeply schooled in traditional law through language, song and dance, this extraordinary Aboriginal leader’s voice will not be forgotten
- Yunupingu, Yolŋu leader and campaigner for Indigenous rights, dies aged 74
- ‘A great Australian’: Anthony Albanese leads tributes to Yunupingu
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In remembering this extraordinary Aboriginal leader, it is difficult to forget the meaning of his family name, Yunupingu – which in the Gumatj dialect of the Yolŋu Matha language means “the rock that stands against time”.
Across so many decades, Yunupingu’s deeds and actions in the struggles for lands, seas, language and rights have surely reflected the meaning of that name. From his father’s campfire accounts of surviving being shot by Europeans in the 1920s “by a man licensed to do so”, to becoming the longest-serving member and chairman of the powerful Northern Land Council, leading the Yothu Yindi Foundation and hosting the annual Garma festival. His passing leaves an indelible mark far beyond the north-east Arnhem Land home of his people.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on carbon offsetting: an overhaul is overdue | Editorial
The industry has not delivered what it promised, and critics are right to be sceptical
The emerging carbon offsets market is chaotic and dysfunctional. Problems need to be addressed openly, and resolved as quickly as possible. A joint investigation by the Guardian, the German weekly Die Zeit and SourceMaterial revealed in January that the vast majority of rainforest offset credits from the leading certifier – which are sold to companies that then use them to make claims about their overall emissions – do not offer the environmental benefits that they claim. Since then, scrutiny has only increased, with more questions being asked of the western businesses behind projects such as Kariba, a huge offset-promoted forest in Zimbabwe.
Recognising the urgent need to rebuild flagging confidence, if the carbon-trading system is not to collapse as it did once before, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market last week announced that new rules for offset issuers will be announced in May. A separate process overseen by a different body is reviewing the claims that businesses make, based on their offset purchases. While all this might sound remote from the concerns of most people, the stakes could hardly be higher. Many environmentalists would prefer governments to oversee a transfer of resources from rich countries to the forested nations that need incentives to conserve precious carbon sinks. The reality is that due to the way our global economic system is organised, we all depend on market mechanisms.
Continue reading...British cows could be given ‘methane blockers’ to cut carbon emissions
UK’s 9.4m cattle produce 14% of human-induced emissions, mostly from belching, but green groups remain sceptical
Cows in the UK could be given “methane blockers” to reduce their emissions of the greenhouse gas as part of plans to achieve the country’s climate goals.
Farmers welcomed the proposal, which follows a consultation that began in August on how new types of animal feed products that can reduce digestive emissions from the animals.
Continue reading...Solar panels could be a lifesaver for public housing tenants grappling with Australia’s soaring energy costs
Natalie Rabey, who relies on power-hungry machines to help her breathe, is campaigning for solar power for Victoria’s public housing
Natalie Rabey doesn’t know how much time she has left. But she knows what she wants to do with it.
“While I’m still breathing I’d like to get some action on solar panels for people in public housing because it’s just terrible at the moment,” she says.
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Continue reading...With Tories stealing some of Labour’s best clothes, Starmer needs a change of gear | Anne McElvoy
How dull can an opposition party be and still command the kinetic energy to win an election that requires a swing of up to 13 percentage points? Especially as the haul of seats it would need for an outright majority – given its dreadful losses in England in 2019, the SNP’s troubled but hardy grip on Scotland and the fact of fewer Welsh MPs being returned to Westminster – approaches the 145 gained by Tony Blair in the 1997 landslide.
Elections do not always vindicate early predictions. Much can happen between now and the election deadline of January 2025 (which effectively means going to the polls in the latter half of next year) that makes yesterday’s “impossible” look like tomorrow’s “told you so”. It would, however, be unwise for Labour to rely, as one of its sharpest advisers on strategy succinctly puts it, on “Tories being crap and Labour being a bit less crap”.
Continue reading...New oilfield in the North Sea would blow the UK’s carbon budget
Campaigners say Rosebank, with a potential yield of 500m barrels, would seriously undermine legal commitment to net zero
A single new oil and gas field in the North Sea would be enough to exceed the UK’s carbon budgets from its operations alone, analysis has shown, as the government considers fossil fuel expansion despite the legally binding commitment to net zero.
Rosebank is the biggest undeveloped oilfield in the North Sea, with the potential to produce 500m barrels of oil, and has already cleared several regulatory hurdles, meaning a decision on its future could come soon.
Continue reading...Farne Islands shut to visitors over fears of new avian flu outbreak
Rangers work to avoid repeat of last year’s devastating losses in breeding seabird colonies on the islands off the Northumberland coast
The Farne Islands will not open to visitors this spring in anticipation of bird flu once again ravaging breeding seabird colonies, after an “unprecedented” spate of deaths last year.
The rocky outcrop of islands off the coast of Northumberland has been looked after by the National Trust since 1925 and there are no previous records of so many endangered seabirds dying at once. More than 6,000 carcasses were picked up last year, which is believed to be the tip of the iceberg compared with how many birds would have died in total.
Continue reading...'It’s going so fast': The decline of New Zealand's glaciers – video
Scientists responsible for monitoring the health of New Zealand's glaciers have revealed a trend of declining snow and ice. The 2023 survey was the 46th undertaken in a collaboration between the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), Victoria University of Wellington, and the Department of Conservation. The longstanding project captures an aerial portrait of more than 50 Southern Alps glaciers at a similar time each year to track how they change. The team spent nearly eight hours travelling back and forth over the alps, taking thousands of aerial photographs of glaciers of differing sizes and orientations to use in various national and international research projects, including one that builds 3D models used to compare snow and ice year-to-year
Tess's story here
Three Insulate Britain protesters face retrial over London street blockade
Giovanna Lewis, Amy Pritchard and Paul Sheeky were part of group who glued themselves to road in City of London in 2021
Three climate protesters who stopped traffic to bring rush hour chaos to the City of London are facing a retrial.
Giovanna Lewis, 65, a councillor from Dorset, Amy Pritchard, 37, a horticultural worker and Paul Sheeky, 46, a screenwriter, were part of a large group of Insulate Britain protesters who glued themselves to the ground and blocked traffic between Bishopsgate and Wormwood Street on 25 October 2021.
Continue reading...Four climate activists convicted of causing public nuisance, but no jail term
Men staged protest in City of London in October 2021, which included one gluing head to road to block traffic
Four climate protesters, including a man who glued his head to the road in order to block traffic in central London, have escaped jail terms.
Matthew Tulley, 44, Ben Taylor, 38, George Burrow, 68 and Anthony Hill, 72, staged a protest between Bishopsgate and Wormwood Street in the City of London on 25 October 2021. They were convicted of causing a public nuisance by a jury at Inner London crown court. All four represented themselves.
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