The Guardian

Mine could affect Britain’s climate commitments, which some believe could help get decision struck down

The government has given the green light to a new coalmine in Cumbria, the first in the UK for more than 30 years, but already moves have begun to challenge the decision before construction work can start.

Climate campaigners are examining the decision with a view to a legal challenge, based on the UK’s national and international legally binding climate commitments.

Report from chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty finds air pollution kills up to 36,000 people a year in England

“Ecodesign” wood burning stoves produce 450 times more toxic air pollution than gas central heating, according to new data published in a report from Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England.

Older stoves, now banned from sale, produce 3,700 times more, while electric heating produces none, the report said.

Climate crisis increases risks for subsistence farmers in Africa who usually work throughout pregnancy

Rising temperatures driven by climate breakdown are causing distress to the foetuses of pregnant farmers, who are among the worst affected by global heating.

A study revealed that the foetuses of women working in fields in the Gambia showed concerning rises in heart rates and reductions in the blood flow to the placenta as conditions became hotter. The women, who do much of the agricultural labour and work throughout pregnancy, told the scientists that temperatures had noticeably increased in the past decade.

Letter urges sponsors provide ‘corporate climate political influencing statements’ after 630 lobbyists attend Cop27

Senior Democratic senators have written to the head of the United Nations warning that public trust in global negotiations on climate action is at risk because of the scale of corporate lobbying – and new controls are needed.

Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Ed Markey of Massachusetts have sent a letter to António Gutierres, the UN secretary general, urging the UN to require sponsors and participants at future climate conferences to provide “audited corporate climate political influencing statements”.

Leading researchers say the UN biodiversity summit is ‘vastly more important’ than the recent Cop27 climate meeting

The “fate of the entire living world” will be determined at the Cop15 UN biodiversity summit, according to leading scientists.

They said the gathering of the world’s nations, which began on Wednesday in Montreal, is “vastly more important than Cop27”, the recent high-profile UN climate meeting. “We say this because of the many dimensions of anthropogenic global change … the most critical, complex and challenging is that of biodiversity loss,” the researchers said.

Locals desperate for lower bills, jobs and economic revival have been seduced by this plan, but they – and we – will suffer

Today, the government has thrown its weight behind a climate-busting, backward-looking coalmine in Cumbria. The staggering hypocrisy of demanding other countries phase down coal, just when we’re phasing it back in again, sends a truly terrible message to global south countries and marks this decision as a climate crime against humanity.

Given this, you’d be forgiven for wondering why a new coalmine appears to have garnered local support. Areas such as Whitehaven in west Cumbria have been told it will “level up” the community – bringing lower bills, more jobs and economic revival to areas that have severely lacked all three for generations. So when a private coal company turned up, the community, understandably nostalgic for its more prosperous past, bit their arm off.

Michael Gove greenlights £165m project that will produce estimated 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year

The UK will build its first new coalmine for three decades at Whitehaven in Cumbria, despite objections locally, across the UK and from around the world.

Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, gave the green light for the project on Wednesday, paving the way for an estimated investment of £165m that will create about 500 new jobs in the region and produce 2.8m tonnes of coking coal a year, largely for steelmaking.

As the government uses draconian laws to crack down on individuals, we must find new ways to protest and keep the public on side

The battle between climate protesters and the government is raging, and most people know who is in the right. The people trying to sound the alarm about the climate crisis are closer to mainstream opinion than those enabling fossil fuel corporations to make almost $3bn a day in profit while the planet burns.

Many in the government probably know it too, but to openly confront that reality would mean doing the unthinkable: pointing to corporate short-termism as the source of the crisis.

Star Trek prepared me to feel a connection with the universe. Instead, I felt terrible grief for our planet. At Cop15, our leaders must negotiate to protect it

Last year, at the age of 90, I had a life-changing experience. I went to space, after decades of playing a science-fiction character who was exploring the universe and building connections with many diverse life forms and cultures. I thought I would experience a similar feeling: a feeling of deep connection with the immensity around us, a deep call for endless exploration. A call to indeed boldly go where no one had gone before.

I was absolutely wrong. As I explained in my latest book, what I felt was totally different. I knew that many before me had experienced a greater sense of care while contemplating our planet from above, because they were struck by the apparent fragility of this suspended blue marble. I felt that too. But the strongest feeling, dominating everything else by far, was the deepest grief that I had ever experienced.

Pressure is increasing on world leaders to make progress at the UN biodiversity summit – but the pile of unfinished tasks is mounting

All procrastinators know the feeling: an enormous task is not close to being finished, time is slipping away and the pressure to act has become impossible to ignore. But despite the mounting unease, there is still not yet enough pressure to take action, and it is unclear if there ever will be.

At the Palais des congrès de Montréal convention centre at Cop15, after more than two years of delays, there is a sense that governments tasked with agreeing this decade’s targets for protecting life on Earth are in just such a situation.

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.