The Guardian

Scientists have long sought to farm the scarce seafood staple, but critics say animals are not suited to intensive methods

Scientists in Japan say they have developed a groundbreaking method of farming squid that could solve shortages of the seafood staple, amid warnings from environmental groups that aquaculture is incompatible with the animal’s welfare.

Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) say their system produced a reliable supply of squid and has the potential to be commercialised.

Queensland environment group had asked federal minister to revisit decisions made going back to 2011

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Federal environment officials have agreed to look again at 18 proposed new coal and gas projects after a Queensland environment group submitted requests to have the effects of climate change considered.

None of the 18 projects has been approved under the country’s environment law, but have been through a process where the environment minister determines the nature and scale of their likely impacts.

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Devastating floods across Pakistan in August and September after several years of high temperatures have left chilli farmers struggling in a country heavily dependent on agriculture, where the flooding is estimated to have caused $40bn worth of damage

Waverley Abbey’s 500-year-old ‘living legend’ wins contest, as experts seek greater protection for ancient trees

A gnarled yew whose twisted trunk has been growing for more than half a millennium has been crowned tree of the year.

The roots of the yew snake around the ruins of Waverley Abbey in Surrey, which was the first monastery founded in Britain by the Cistercian religious order in 1128.

Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin tries the interactivist climate action virtual masterpiece

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Judge says VicForests’ actions posed ‘a threat of serious and irreversible harm’ to greater gliders and yellow-bellied gliders

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Victoria’s state logging company has failed to protect threatened species of gliders, and its methods to check for them before logging are inadequate, the state’s supreme court has found.

Justice Melinda Richards ordered VicForests on Friday to carry out full surveys of areas for greater gliders and yellow-bellied gliders before logging, and to include buffers around habitats.

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Journalist apologises for ‘unintentional’ lifting of material from political analysis written by Josh Bavas and is revealed to have copied Queensland parliament factsheet. Plus: Quillette charges US$150 for New Orleans social

In an opinion piece in March, the Courier-Mail columnist Peter Gleeson – who apologised this week for plagiarising another journalist’s work – filled 62% of his article with copy from a Queensland parliament factsheet.

In his Gleeso Confidential column, the former editor of the Sunday Mail used hundreds of words from the official document without quotation marks, Weekly Beast can reveal.

Along with my neighbours, I’ll find out today whether the Murrumbidgee River will inundate our homes

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Pictures flood my phone of waters serenely enveloping the plain that surrounds my village in north Wagga Wagga. Along with about 300 neighbours, I’ll find out today whether the Murrumbidgee River will inundate our homes.

But as residents watch the rising flood waters, we face an unsettling quiet. The point of no return has already been passed and the river will have its way: our homes, situated within a ring levee in the middle of a New South Wales Riverina region flood plain, are already cut off.

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Teresa Ribera says she was ‘hugely surprised’ and saddened by PM’s initial refusal to go to Cop27 summit

The Spanish government has urged Rishi Sunak to demonstrate a clear commitment to fighting the climate emergency, describing the British government’s flip-flopping over the prime minister’s attendance of the forthcoming Cop27 summit as “sad” and “surprising”, given the UK’s global reputation and its current presidency of the conference.

Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, also said the “absurd”, heel-dragging political debate over climate change in the UK was “surprising and disappointing”.

As Pacific nations face the prospect of losing entire islands, the thought of leaving behind the bones of our ancestors is unbearable

• Before it is lost is series of essays from the Pacific islands

The first cyclone I lived through ripped open the graves on our island, pulled coffins from graves and unearthed the bones of my ancestors.

My sisters and I found a skull – a woman, we assumed based on the length of white wispy hair still attached. We thought at first it was a coral rock, but we realised quickly that she was once one of us.

Environment Agency’s James Bevan says he wants to change law that provides tough water testing regime

The head of the Environment Agency has signalled he wants to change a key regulation on water quality which repeatedly exposes how English rivers are being choked in a cocktail of sewage and agricultural pollution.

James Bevan, the chief executive of the Environment Agency, said he wanted to change the water framework directive, the law that provides a tough testing regime for English rivers. It provides a legal requirement that 75% of English rivers be in good health under its testing regime by 2027.

Researchers recommend that displays do not take place in areas with large wildlife populations

Though fireworks on bonfire night bring joy to many people, it is likely to be a night of terror and distress for the UK’s geese.

Research by Anglia Ruskin University has found that firework displays cause wild birds to suffer significant distress, and researchers have recommended that displays do not take place in areas with large wildlife populations.

Latest attempt to dismantle primary ‘school street’ in Tower Hamlets disrupted amid pollution concerns

A group of pupils in east London have seen off – temporarily at least – the workers who had come to dismantle their school street.

Parents gathered outside Chisenhale primary school in Mile End on Thursday morning to show support for the area, which includes a play space protected by a wooden fence, trellised with plants and painted in bright colours.

One by one, the grim scenarios climate scientists had outlined for the near future have been overtaken by events: extreme storms, droughts, floods and ice-sheet collapses whose sudden appearances have outstripped researchers’ worst predictions. Catastrophic climate change is happening more rapidly and with greater intensity than their grimmest warnings, it transpires.

With the 2022 global climate summit Cop 27 upon us, the Guardian looks back at how the climate crisis has affected communities around the world since the last meeting in Glasgow in 2021

• Cop27 climate summit: window for avoiding catastrophe is closing fast
• Climate activists: how are you protesting during Cop27?

Secretary-general warns effects of global heating are outstripping the ability to adapt to them

A dramatic increase in funding for climate adaptation is needed to save millions of lives from “climate carnage”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said.

Climate adaptation includes preparing defences against rising floods, shelters against intensifying cyclones and emergency plans to protect people during worsening heatwaves and droughts. Guterres said only a small fraction of the required finance was given by rich nations to protect vulnerable people.

Office for Environmental Protection chair expresses concern over delays to legislative deadlines

The head of the independent environmental watchdog is holding talks with the environment secretary over delays in meeting key targets to tackle water and air pollution and halt the decline in nature.

Dame Glenys Stacey, the chair of the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), has told Thérèse Coffey, the new secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, that the possibility of taking formal enforcement action against the government over multiple missed targets was being kept under active review. The OEP can launch an investigation and take legal action if it deems it necessary.

Is natural gas renewable? Is it a fossil fuel? A casual google search for natural gas gives the impression that these questions are somehow up for debate. And while natural gas has helped reduce carbon emissions as it was widely adopted as a replacement for coal, it is now up against zero-emission energy such as wind and solar. So how did natural gas end up in the same bracket as renewables? Josh Toussaint-Strauss explores the lengths fossil fuel companies have gone to in order to try to convince consumers, voters and lawmakers that natural gas is somehow a clean energy source

While climate justice is debated at the summit, justice is failing the activist who is six months into a hunger strike

• Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion

You probably haven’t heard of Alaa Abd El-Fattah – so let me tell you about him. He’s a British citizen. He’s a father to a 10-year-old son. He’s a dearly loved brother. He’s a writer and a pro-democracy activist in Egypt, whose powerful and emotive blogging played a part in catalysing the nation’s seismic 2011 uprising.

He’s also been unlawfully imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities for more than nine years – that’s a quarter of his life – and he has faced persecution and psychological torture. Now he could have just days to live.

Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion

Materials put into domestic compost are failing to disintegrate after six months – the only solution is to use less

Most plastics marketed as “home compostable” don’t actually work, with as much as 60% failing to disintegrate after six months, according to research.

An estimated 10% of people can effectively compost at home, but for the remaining 90% of the population the best place to dispose of compostable plastics is in landfill, where they slowly break down, releasing methane, researchers say. If compostable plastic ends up among food waste, it contaminates it and blocks the recycling process, the study finds. The only solution is to use less plastic.

The Devon coastline reveals that Earth was in a near-lifeless state for up to five million years after the last extinction event

Budleigh Salterton, on the south coast of Devon, sits above the most frightening cliffs on Earth. They are not particularly high. Though you don’t want to stand beneath them, they are not especially prone to collapse. The horror takes another form. It is contained in the story they tell. For they capture the moment at which life on Earth almost came to an end.

The sediments preserved in these cliffs were laid down in the early Triassic period, just after the greatest mass extinction in the history of multicellular life that brought the Permian period to an end 252m years ago. Around 90% of species died, and fish and four-footed animals were more or less exterminated between 30 degrees north of the equator and 40 degrees south.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist