The Guardian

More than 3,000 people protest on estate of Alexander Darwall after his court victory ends right to wild camp in England

More than 3,000 people on Saturday joined one of the UK’s largest ever countryside access protests on the Dartmoor estate of a wealthy landowner who won a case ending the right to wild camp in England.

Groups of walkers, families, students and local people arrived by foot, shuttle bus and bike to the small Dartmoor village of Cornwood throughout the morning and then thronged for hours along moss- and ivy-draped lanes up on to the rugged, boulder-strewn moorland owned by the Conservative party donor and hedge fund manager Alexander Darwall.

A young innovator has won a top award for developing software to map the tube routes with the cleanest air

Like most Londoners, Tanya Beri has mixed views of the city’s vast underground rail network that carries millions of passengers every day on its 11 lines and through its 272 stations. The tube keeps London moving, though often in cramped, uncomfortable and unhygienic conditions.

However, Beri believes she has found a way to improve travel for concerned commuters. She has developed a phone app that can direct passengers to routes that offer minimal air pollution.

Exclusive: Alexander Darwall, who said he brought case to improve conservation, is releasing pheasants near protected woodland

The landowner who took Dartmoor national park to court to ban wild camping may be putting a rare beetle at risk by releasing pheasants next to an ecologically important woodland, against the advice of environmental experts.

This is despite him having said he pushed for a wild camping ban in order to “improve conservation of the Dartmoor commons”, arguing that campers damage the national park with litter and disturbance.

Industry body working on new way to reassure customers schemes will protect the environment

New standards should bring greater scrutiny of carbon offsets and give buyers confidence their money is helping protect the environment, leading figures in the carbon credits market have insisted, after an investigation by the Guardian revealed widespread problems with offsetting.

Annette Nazareth, chair of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, which sets nonbinding principles to which sellers of carbon credits can sign up said the body was working on new standards that should reassure consumers.

Mystery of north-east coast deaths takes new turn, as panel says they are unlikely to have been caused by algal blooms or pollutant

The mystery behind the deaths of thousands of crabs and lobsters along England’s north-east coast has developed a further twist, with experts saying it could be down to a new disease.

The die-offs, which began in autumn 2021 and recurred at various points in 2022, affected at least 70km (43 miles) of the coastline, with some of the crustaceans showing an unusual twitching while dying.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including an injured kite, baby seal pups and a rescued joey

Jerome Powell and Mervyn King reject taking on climate policy, while Mark Carney and Christine Lagarde say action is vital

The climate crisis has come to represent a major challenge for central banks. How much should their monetary policy and approach to banking supervision be influenced by it?

On one hand, there is growing evidence that global heating, particularly through its effect on agriculture, may create inflationary pressures. And there is even stronger evidence that the physical and transition risks created by the climate crisis are having, and will continue to have, a major impact on the value of financial assets and financial firms, which those responsible for the stability of the financial system cannot ignore.

In an attempt to gain popular support, Extinction Rebellion has promised to 'quit' public disruption as a primary tactic of its protests, focusing instead on the 'perpetrators' of climate destruction. The Guardian environment correspondent Damien Gayle joins the group in its first targeted action against Michael Gove's Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the UK government's decision to approve a new coalmine in Cumbria

Small interventions on electric cars and plant-based meat could unlock rapid emissions cuts, say experts

Three “super-tipping points” for climate action could trigger a cascade of decarbonisation across the global economy, according to a report.

Relatively small policy interventions on electric cars, plant-based alternatives to meat and green fertilisers would lead to unstoppable growth in those sectors, the experts said.

For a couple of days this month, wind power supplied over half the UK’s electricity. You wouldn’t know it from our bills – or our politicians

I remember the first time wind energy emerged as a serious contender in the UK’s energy provision. It was 6 November 2012, and the country’s electricity use from wind hit an all-time high in the middle of the afternoon, at 9.3%. The casual observer wouldn’t have noticed, and the expert wouldn’t have been surprised, but for people between those poles, it was astonishing. Windfarms were then perceived as a nascent technology, so infant and speculative they needed endless subsidy, intervention, special pleading.

To this day, it remains a mystery how a reputation for well-meant inadequacy clings to renewable energy sources: it can’t all be the result of lobbying by the fossil fuel industry. Sometimes, it feels like we just don’t want good news.

The animal weighed in at a possible new world record of 2.7kg and was discovered by park rangers on a walk in Queenland

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She’s toxic, weighs as much as some newborn babies and was found in the wilds of Australia’s far north.

A giant cane toad, dubbed “Toadzilla”, that was found by rangers in Queensland’s Conway national park on Thursday, is believed to be the largest of her species ever found.

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Colony of about 500 birds seen in remote region where they face existential threat due to global heating

A newly discovered emperor penguin colony has been seen using satellite images of one the most remote and inaccessible regions of Antarctica.

The colony, home to about 500 birds, makes a total of 66 known emperor penguin colonies around the coastline of Antarctica, half of which were discovered by space satellites. The climate crisis is posing an existential threat to these colonies, as sea ice is rapidly melting.

Research suggests if trend continues, view of Orion’s belt will disappear due to glow from artificial lighting

“There is no light in earth or heaven / But the cold light of stars,” wrote the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

But for myriad writers and artists, that source of inspiration could be fading as research has revealed light pollution is rapidly reducing the number of stars visible to the naked eye. The study, published in the journal Science, suggests locations with 250 visible stars at present will have just 100 visible stars in 18 years.

A monarchy ‘gift’ to the Treasury should not detract from the anachronistic convention of crown estate rights over land and sea

• King Charles redirects £1bn windfarm profits towards ‘public good’

So the new king has reversed a thousand years of feudal convention and accepted that the value of the seabed rightfully belongs to his “subjects” rather than himself. That is the implication of the decision announced today saying King Charles will support handing over more of the crown’s share of revenues from the offshore wind boom to the Treasury, so the money can be spent in the public interest rather than for his private interest.

Given his green reputation and his coming to power in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis in living memory, the new king was perhaps embarrassed that the expansion of windfarms would bring a large £1bn a year windfall to the crown estate, 25% of which would, under the current arrangements, have gone directly to the royal household as part of the annual sovereign grant.

Molly Scott Cato is professor of green economics at Roehampton University, and a former Green MEP

Right to camp in park without permission was lost last week after court challenge by wealthy landowner

Dartmoor landowners will be paid for allowing wild camping on their land under a new agreement with the national park.

Last week, the right to wild camp in the park without permission from the landowner was lost after a wealthy landowner took the park authority to court. Dartmoor was the last place in England or Wales where there was a right to wild camp.

Greta Thunberg joined a panel of climate activists in Davos, to debate the environmental crisis with the executive director of the International Energy Agency. To open the discussion, Thunberg told the audience it is 'absurd' that in Davos 'we are listening to the people who are mainly causing the climate crisis, rather than those on the frontline'. She explained: 'We are being bombarded by messages by these people, those responsible for the destruction of the planet.' Thursday is the penultimate day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

• Davos day three live: Greta Thunberg says it is ‘absurd’ to be listening to those ‘responsible for causing climate crisis’
• Riot police carry Greta Thunberg away from German coalmine protest – video

Campaigners say long delay is adding to pollution and government would be betraying manifesto promise if glass is not included

The launch of a long awaited deposit return scheme for plastic bottles is expected to be announced by the government.

Five years after Michael Gove first promised the scheme, it is understood ministers will on Friday give the go-ahead for a deposit return scheme (DRS) which will not include glass, according to a report in the Grocer magazine.

British multinational to spend huge sums on schemes that do not bring genuine carbon reductions, analysis shows

• More than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are ‘worthless’
• Greenwashing or a net zero necessity? Scientists on carbon offsetting
• Carbon offsets flawed but we are in a climate emergency

The fossil fuel firm Shell has set aside more than $450m (£367m) to invest in carbon offsetting projects, and plans to buy the equivalent of half the current market for nature offsets every year, the Guardian can reveal.

But a joint investigation by the Guardian, Die Zeit and Source Material into Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn voluntary offsets market, has found, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, that more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to be “phantom credits” and do not represent genuine carbon reductions.

Coca-Cola claimed juice was healthy despite toxic ‘forever chemicals’ levels ‘hundreds of times’ above federal limits, suit says

A new class-action lawsuit in the US alleges Coca-Cola and Simply Orange Juice deceived customers with claims of an all-natural, healthy product when the juice has been found to be contaminated with toxic PFAS at levels “hundreds of times” above federal advisory limits for drinking water.

PFAS are a class of about 12,000 chemicals typically used to make thousands of consumer products resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and they are linked to cancer, fetal complications, liver disease, kidney disease, autoimmune disorders and other serious health issues.

UK government’s piecemeal response to harmful practice attacked as too slow to stop ‘industrial fishing frenzy’

The UK government has proposed “feeble” new restrictions on harmful bottom trawling within 13 marine parks in England that would only actually ban it in three, campaigners say.

Under the proposals put forward by Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, three out of the 13 marine protected areas (MPAs) would introduce whole-site bans on the environmentally destructive practice of bottom trawling. The other 10 would introduce partial bans in certain areas, mostly reefs and rocks where trawling is unlikely to occur anyway. England has 40 offshore marine protected areas in total.