The Guardian

Report finds nuclear energy more expensive than renewable alternatives and calculates costs for large-scale reactors for first time

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Electricity from nuclear power in Australia would be at least 50% more expensive than solar and wind, according to a report from the CSIRO that has for the first time calculated costs for large-scale reactors.

The federal Coalition, which has claimed nuclear would provide cheap electricity, is still to reveal any details on its nuclear policy after initially promising it would make an announcement in time for last week’s federal budget.

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Case alleges French company’s exploitation of fossil fuel contributed to deaths of victims in extreme weather disasters

A criminal case has been filed against the CEO and directors of the French oil company TotalEnergies, alleging its fossil fuel exploitation has contributed to the deaths of victims of climate-fuelled extreme weather disasters.

The case was filed in Paris by eight people harmed by extreme weather, and three NGOs. The plaintiffs believe it to be the first such criminal case filed against the individuals running a major oil company. The public prosecutor who received the file has three months to decide whether to open a judicial investigation or dismiss the complaint.

Move reflects wider state of politics around active travel – arguing around the margins and doing little to change lives for better

In the six days since a law to prosecute dangerous cyclists was announced, somewhere close to 30 people will have been killed on UK roads, none of them struck by bikes. About 500 more will have suffered serious, potentially life-changing injuries, with pretty much all connected to motor vehicles.

Again, going on the statistical averages, over those same six days, slightly more than 1,600 people across the UK will have died due to illnesses associated with physical inactivity. Riding a bike cuts your likelihood of developing such conditions by about half.

‘Catastrophic’ global decline due to dams, mining, diverting water and pollution threatens humans and ecosystems, study warns

Migratory fish populations have crashed by more than 80% since 1970, new findings show.

Populations are declining in all regions of the world, but it is happening fastest in South America and the Caribbean, where abundance of these species has dropped by 91% over the past 50 years.

It’s likely the urban pest first emerged from its native lands about 1,200 years ago. As global trade accelerated, the hitchhikers made their way more rapidly around the world

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German cockroaches thrive in buildings all over the world. They’re one of the most common cockroach species, causing trouble for people both here and overseas. But in nature, they’re nowhere to be found.

Just how this urban pest evolved and populated our dwellings was unknown – until now.

‘Critical slowing down’ of recovery raises concern over forest’s resilience to ecosystem collapse

More than a third of the Amazon rainforest is struggling to recover from drought, according to a new study that warns of a “critical slowing down” of this globally important ecosystem.

The signs of weakening resilience raise concerns that the world’s greatest tropical forest – and biggest terrestrial carbon sink – is degrading towards a point of no return.

Vulnerable birds deviating from migratory routes by up to 155 miles, which could affect breeding

Eagles that have migratory routes through Ukraine have shifted their flight paths to avoid areas affected by the conflict, researchers have found.

GPS data has revealed that greater spotted eagles not only made large detours after the invasion began, but also curtailed pitstops to rest and refuel, or avoided making them altogether.

Labor says it will phase out the practice by 2028 – 10 years after it first announced the policy. But farm advocates say the timeline is ‘radical’

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One of the great contrasts that has struck me on city visits is the rise of dog culture.

Massive pet warehouses with owners and their dogs waiting outside to buy dog clothes, fancy food, treats, leads, collars, beds, blankets and booties. That is before they are taken to the doggy dentist on the way to doggy daycare or down to the doggy park for a doggy dalliance or perhaps a posh puppuccino.

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Scientists say discovery may be linked to decades-long decline in sperm counts in men around the world

Microplastics have been found in human testicles, with researchers saying the discovery might be linked to declining sperm counts in men.

The scientists tested 23 human testes, as well as 47 testes from pet dogs. They found microplastic pollution in every sample.

More than 216,000 fish died in 2022-2023, when England recorded a 54% increase in sewage spills

Mass deaths of fish in England’s rivers have increased almost tenfold since 2020, with fears sewage pollution is exterminating life in the country’s waterways.

Environment Agency (EA) data from the past four years shows an alarming rise in the number of fish deaths linked to sewage pollution, with figures escalating from 26,690 in 2020-2021 to 216,135 in 2023-2024.

These spaces are crucial for our wellbeing, but cash-strapped councils are being forced to treat them as revenue earners

My local green space, Brockwell Park in Brixton and Herne Hill, south London, is an oasis of calm in the busy city. Friends catch up in the walled garden, where wisteria trails over pillars and roses and bluebells explode from the earth. In the community garden, local people work together to grow vegetables and run sessions to connect nature-deprived children to the land.

In the centre of the sometimes crushing metropolis, this park means everything to me – it keeps me sane, and it gives me hope. But this green lifeline is, every summer, taken away, as I await the arrival of the park’s music festival season with dread. As huge metal walls go up, dividing us from the green, and HGVs begin flattening the grass and soil, I feel a genuine sense of horror. A large part of the park is cut off for weeks, and our community’s heart is pulled out as people stream into events whose expensive tickets most people living round here could never afford. And the same is happening in shared green spaces all over the UK.

Rebecca Tamás is a writer of environmental nonfiction and a poet. Her most recent book is Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman

Five years after her last companion died and the aquarium’s owner pledged to free her, Bella still languishes in a tiny tank amid shops

In the heart of Seoul, amid the luxury shops at the foot of the world’s sixth-tallest skyscraper, a lone beluga whale named Bella swims aimlessly in a tiny, lifeless tank, where she has been trapped for a decade.

Her plight is urgent, with campaigners racing to rescue her from the bare tank in a glitzy shopping centre in South Korea’s capital before it is too late.

A state industrial strategy is needed to reduce carbon output, produce cleaner growth and redistribute jobs around the UK

Theresa May and Boris Johnson both argued for levelling up and for a state-supported green transition undergirded by an industrial strategy. Neither delivered and their successor, Rishi Sunak, has repudiated their legacy as prime minister. He looks to the City to deliver growth, with banks determining the rate of investment to meet the challenge of the climate emergency. This is a recipe for failure. The Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s independent advisers on cutting carbon emissions, warned last year of “worryingly slow” progress to meet net zero targets. The government is not engaging on what it will take to decarbonise.

Weaning the country off fossil fuels and on to green energy is a complex transition that should be a job for the state, not the free market. Yet Britain is bottom of the league for state spending on renewables in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In the offshore industry alone 30,000 workers could end up with nowhere to go by 2030 without new roles in green industries. Relying on big finance to meet that gap will entrench today’s failing model, which emphasises the need to attract significant capital flows through deregulation and privatisation, strengthening the hand of boom-and-bust financial services and weakening labour rights. The flipside is a bigger trade deficit and a destructive politics of redistribution to asset holders and to London.

Milford Haven, Southampton and Immingham top the list for emissions of gases and particulates

Ships calling at the UK’s most-polluted ports produce more nitrogen oxides than all the cars registered in the same cities or regions, analysis has shown.

A report from Transport & Environment (T&E) said that ships were continuing to discharge huge quantities of air pollutants at ports, with Milford Haven, Southampton and Immingham topping the list for emissions of harmful sulphur oxides and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) as well as nitrogen oxides (NOx).

A new exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London includes ‘tragic’ tales of species wiped out from their natural habitats

Douglas Russell, a senior curator at London’s Natural History Museum, was examining a collection of nests gathered on the island of Guam when he made an unsettling discovery.

“The nests had been picked up more than 100 years ago, and I was curating them with the aim of adding them to the museum’s main collection. They turned out to be one of the most tragic, saddest accumulations of objects I’ve ever had to deal with,” Russell told the Observer last week.

Popular among teenagers, the large electric bikes have triggered numerous complaints to councils as fears grow for the safety of riders and pedestrians

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If you frequent coastal towns or suburbs around Australia, you might be familiar with the sight of large, speedy ebikes zooming along the footpath. Fat bikes, as they’re commonly known, have been described as the monster trucks of the cycling world. With wide, thick tyres and seats big enough for two, the electric bicycles are designed to handle sand and off-road terrain.

But they have also garnered a cult status among young people, who are using them to get around with friends, take their surfboard to the beach and commute to school.

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PFAS chemicals present in air, rain, atmosphere and water in basin, which holds nearly 95% of US freshwater

Toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” are ubiquitous in the Great Lakes basin’s air, rain, atmosphere and water, new peer-reviewed research shows.

The first-of-its-kind, comprehensive picture of PFAS levels for the basin, which holds nearly 95% of the nation’s freshwater, also reveals that precipitation is probably a major contributor to the lakes’ contamination.

Edible oil droplets trap bugs without the harm to people and wildlife that synthetic pesticides can cause

Tiny sticky droplets sprayed on crops to trap pests could be a green alternative to chemical pesticides, research has shown.

The insect glue, produced from edible oils, was inspired by plants such as sundews that use the strategy to capture their prey. A key advantage of physical pesticides over toxic pesticides is that pests are highly unlikely to evolve resistance, as this would require them to develop much larger and stronger bodies, while bigger beneficial insects, like bees, are not trapped by the drops.

A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product, researchers have found

The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found.

A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product (GDP), the researchers found, a far higher estimate than that of previous analyses. The world has already warmed by more than 1C (1.8F) since pre-industrial times and many climate scientists predict a 3C (5.4F) rise will occur by the end of this century due to the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, a scenario that the new working paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, states will come with an enormous economic cost.