The Guardian

Fighting the climate emergency is only one side of the story. Science tells us we must tackle the biodiversity crisis at the same time as addressing global heating to save the planet from further catastrophe.

Both crises centre on carbon. Burning carbon in the form of fossil fuels has led to global heating, and that needs to stop, but biodiversity – nature – is also built on carbon and it can be part of the solution. 

The Age of Extinction reporter Phoebe Weston explains how the Cop15  summit in Montreal  is a once in a decade chance to stop the loss of biodiversity and bend the curve to help save Earth.

• What is Cop15 and why does it matter for all life on Earth?
• Making sense of Cop15: what to look out for in Montreal
  

Number of species on red list in the country doubled in last 20 years

The number of bird species seriously threatened in Wales has doubled in the last 20 years, with the rook, swift and greenfinch added to the red list.

A report from a coalition of conservation groups places 60 species on the red list, accounting for a quarter of the species in Wales – more than ever before.

Not even bosses who steal wages off their workers go to jail

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Moama’s council forced to reassure residents water is filtered and safe to drink after complaints over colour on social media

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Brown filtered water is likely to persist for months in Murray River towns from New South Wales down to South Australia, as communities continue to deal with the aftermath of major flooding.

The Murray River council in Moama was forced to reassure residents its filtered water supply was safe to drink after a string of social media complaints over murky tap water.

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'Multinational corporations are filling their bank accounts while emptying our world of its natural gifts,' says the UN secretary general António Guterres, as he opens the Cop15 biodiversity conference. 'This conference is our chance to end this orgy of destruction.' 

 Governments will begin formal negotiations for this decade’s UN biodiversity targets at the conference. At the Montreal opening ceremony, the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, urged countries to agree on a target to conserve 30% of Earth for nature in the final agreement

• The five biggest threats to our natural world … and how we can stop them
• Canada leads calls to reverse nature loss

Leaders announce partnership to reduce global dependence on Russian energy

Joe Biden has agreed a deal to ramp up gas exports from the US to the UK as part of a joint effort to cut bills and limit Russia’s impact on western energy supplies.

Sunak and Biden announced an “energy security and affordability partnership” and set up a joint action group, led by Westminster and White House officials, with the aim of reducing global dependence on Russian energy.

The flight takes less than one hour and yet there are few environmentally friendly alternatives

If a flight is so short you don’t have time to finish your complementary cheese and biscuits before having your rubbish whisked away for landing, chances are there’s a more environmentally friendly and convenient way of getting to where you’re going.

The French government’s recent decision to ban short-haul domestic flights between cities that are connected by a train or bus trip of less than two and a half hours has sparked some energetic debate this week about whether Australia could follow the French in moving away from short-haul flights.

UK-Turkish team think sound of vehicles can interfere with their normal song when trying to warn off nearby rivals

It isn’t just people who get road rage. Robins in the countryside become more aggressive when they hear the sound of traffic, according to a study.

Beloved for their plump appearance, proud bearing and sweet song, European robins are actually fiercely competitive creatures, whose calls and behaviours are part of a struggle for territorial dominance fought daily with their neighbours.

The environment secretary tells MPs it is ‘not the role of government to provide free food’ or to intervene in markets

The government has ruled out making any intervention in the market to help farmers or consumers with high food prices, the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has said.

Food prices have soared in the past year, in part owing to higher input prices such as energy, fertiliser and animal feed. Last month, food price inflation hit a fresh high of 12.4%, with poorer households hit hardest.

Deal reached that paves way for communities in England to authorise projects without unanimous support

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Rishi Sunak has signalled the end of a moratorium on new onshore wind projects in an attempt to head off a row with Tory MPs, his second U-turn in two days.

The prime minister and the business secretary, Grant Shapps, reached a deal on Tuesday afternoon that will pave the way for communities to be able to authorise such energy developments without unanimous support.

Activists and experts say green light for coal would show UK’s ‘posturing, double standards and broken promises’

For the UK to open a new coalmine would be “hypocritical”, would “send the wrong message”, and makes “a mockery” of climate action, developing country activists and experts involved in global climate negotiations have said.

A decision on whether to go ahead with a new coalmine in Cumbria is expected from the UK government as soon as Wednesday.

Just Stop Oil’s Hannah Hunt and Eben Lazarus found guilty after glueing themselves to Constable’s The Hay Wain

Two climate protesters have been ordered to compensate the National Gallery after they were found guilty of causing more than £1,000 of damage to the Hay Wain, probably John Constable’s best-known painting.

In July Just Stop Oil supporters Hannah Hunt, 23, and Eben Lazarus, 22, taped printed posters of a dystopian reimagining of the landscape over its canvas, before glueing their hands to its gilt frame.

The ‘30x30’ proposal is supported by more than 100 countries but Indigenous peoples and human rights campaigners have significant doubts

Conserving 30% of Earth for nature would be equivalent to the 1.5C climate target, Canada’s environment minister has said, as senior UN figures warn action on nature loss at Cop15 this month is key to helping solve the biodiversity and climate crises.

Steven Guilbeault, a former environmental activist who is now Canada’s climate minister, said that agreeing to conserve nearly a third of the planet by the end of the decade is a key aim for his country at the biodiversity summit, which is being held in Montreal over the next two weeks.

Regulator calls spending on network improvements ‘extremely disappointing’ after companies undershot budgets

Ofwat has criticised water companies for failing to invest enough in treatment plants to stop the overuse of raw sewage discharges.

The water regulator for England and Wales said on Tuesday that water and wastewater companies were falling behind on their investment plans, leaving promised service improvements behind schedule or undelivered.

Nature is under threat as never before, but what does that actually mean? We explain what is at stake – and why action at Cop15 is more crucial than ever

Despite humanity’s many technological advances, we can only manage a well-informed guess at the true extent of life on Earth: 8.7 million species, according to the most commonly cited figure, with other estimates ranging between 5.3 million and one trillion.

There is greater certainty about the decline of biodiversity that human behaviour is driving, with species dying off as much as 1,000 times more frequently than before the arrival of humans 60m years ago, as one study suggests.

Ministers have shattered the legal system and are failing to tackle the climate crisis. Now they are making protesters their scapegoats

Indigo Rumbelow is an activist with Just Stop Oil

It’s a strange paradox. The tougher that Tory home secretaries talk, the faster law and order seems to break down. Whoever’s in the role – Grant Shapps, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman – the same rhetoric grinds on, day after day: cracking down, clamping down, demanding tougher action. Now the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has joined in, reportedly launching “Operation Get Tough” and demanding the police use all the new powers available to them through the latest sweep of anti-protest laws.

Who’s listening? Certainly not us. Just Stop Oil knows first-hand that the legal system is collapsing. Some of our supporters’ cases can’t even be heard until 2024. Many of my friends will spend this Christmas in prison, most held without a trial, on remand. Jan Goodey, the first person to be convicted under the government’s new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, was sentenced to six months in prison just last week, the first of many protesters who will probably be criminalised for caring. Instead of facing up to the challenge of ending new oil and gas, the government would prefer to silence the alarm bells.

Inger Andersen spells out the challenges facing the planet as Cop15 delegates gather inMontreal

The UN’s environment chief has warned that “we are at war with nature” and must “make peace”, as countries gather at Cop15 in Montreal to agree a deal to protect the planet’s biodiversity.

“We’ve just welcomed the 8 billionth member of the human race on this planet. That’s a wonderful birth of a baby, of course. But we need to understand that the more people there are, the more we put the Earth under heavy pressure,” said Inger Andersen, the executive director of the UN environment programme.

Hybrid vehicles so popular they account for one in every three cars sold by Toyota

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Hybrid vehicles that combine battery and fuel technology are proving increasingly popular in Australia with sales double that of more expensive electric-only cars.

Sales figures released this week show that low-emissions cars are soaring in popularity.

Lack of funding identified as biggest obstacle to planting and maintaining hedgerows

Farmers are urging the government to include hedge creation in its nature-friendly farming subsidy scheme in an attempt to increase biodiversity.

Details about the post-Brexit replacement for the EU’s common agricultural policy have been scarce, with land managers simply told they would get payments for providing “public goods” such as protecting nature.

Also under fire for sewage discharges and executive pay, company makes first-half profits of almost £500m

Thames Water has reported a boom in first-half profits to almost £500m, despite a surge in the number of burst pipes during the drought across the UK over the summer.

The company, which instituted a hosepipe ban from August to September amid the summer heatwave, said the rise in leakage and supply interruptions due to mains bursting was the result of “hot weather and dry ground”.