The Guardian

Landmark research finds 244m tonnes of organic carbon is stored in top 10cm of marine sediment in British waters

Seabed habitats could capture almost three times more carbon than forests in the UK every year if left undisturbed, according to a report published on Thursday.

Researchers at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (Sams) have calculated that 244m tonnes of organic carbon is stored in the top 10cm of UK seabed habitats. That includes seagrass meadows, salt marshes, kelp and mussel beds but most (98%) is stored in seabed sediments such as mud and silt.

Food campaign Bite Back says 10 firms account for more carbon emissions globally than aviation industry

Britain’s biggest food and drink firms are doing too little to tackle the climate emergency and are producing “staggering” amounts of greenhouse gases, campaigners claim.

The 10 companies that manufacture more of the UK’s food than anyone else produce more carbon emissions between them than even the aviation industry, a report says.

Three of the firms increased their annual emissions in 2022 – Ferrero, Kraft Heinz and PepsiCo.

Seven are on course to miss meeting emissions targets they have set themselves to achieve by 2050.

Only four have a verifiable commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050 – Danone, Mars, Mondelēz and Nestlé.

Scientists found 90% of young coral surveyed remained healthy compared with 25% of older corals, after mass bleaching event in the Caribbean

Young corals bred using in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and planted in reefs around the US, Mexico and the Caribbean have surprised scientists, after most survived last year’s record marine heatwave, while older corals struggled.

A study has found that 90% of the young IVF-created corals surveyed remained healthy and colourful, holding on to the algae that live within them and supply them with nutrition. In contrast, only about a quarter of older non-IVF corals remained healthy.

Hosting the conference would help us overcome our colonial mentality and the fossil fuel lobby, both of which have held us back from tackling climate change

As the world grapples with the climate crisis, Australia stands at a crossroads. Our bid to co-host the UN’s climate conference, Cop31, with Pacific nations is not just a diplomatic event; it is a pivotal opportunity to redefine our nation’s role in the global fight against climate change. This could mark a shift, propelling Australia from climate laggard to leader on the world stage. With the Cop presidency, we would be at the centre of international climate negotiations, shouldering the responsibility to provide the infrastructure and visionary leadership needed to drive meaningful progress. The stakes are high, but so too are the potential rewards for our nation and the planet.

For years, Australia has been held back from meaningful climate action by the powerful influence of the fossil fuel lobby. This industry has shaped policies and public opinion, prioritising short-term profits over long-term sustainability. Their grip on our political landscape has delayed the transition to cleaner energy and put us on a dangerous path that threatens the security of our communities, our environment and our economy. Now, as the cost of living skyrockets and climate impacts escalate, we’re facing the consequences of that inaction.

Minister approved Thames Water project at location prioritised by Sadiq Khan for wild swimming

Labour appeared to be in disarray on Wednesday over ambitions to clean up the River Thames for swimming.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced plans to prioritise an area of the river in Teddington, south-west London, to make it safe and clean for swimming as part of a new 10-year strategy to reduce pollution in the river and encourage people to spend time in and around it.

Emergency crews battle to reinforce defences around Wrocław in Poland amid devastating rainfall

Soldiers, emergency workers and volunteers battled through the night to reinforce defences around Wrocław, Poland’s third biggest city, as the EU said flooding in central Europe happening simultaneously alongside wildfires in Portugal showed climate breakdown in action.

More than five times the average rainfall for the whole of September has fallen in five days on swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, triggering devastating flooding that has killed 22 people in four countries.

Oxfam says ‘commonsense solution’ would reduce emissions and raise urgently needed climate finance

Fair taxes on superyachts and private jets in the UK could have brought in £2bn last year to provide vital funds for communities suffering the worst effects of climate breakdown, campaigners say.

Private jet use in the UK is soaring. It was home to the second highest number of private flights in Europe last year, behind only France, according to figures from the European Business Aviation Association.

Conservation group calls on government to ban insect-killing neonicotinoid pesticides outright

A national “butterfly emergency” has been declared by Butterfly Conservation after the lowest Big Butterfly Count since records began.

An average of just seven butterflies per 15-minute count were recorded by participants in this summer’s butterfly count, the lowest in the survey’s 14-year history.

A network of public bodies are supposed to safeguard us from flooding. But, like old boys’ clubs, they are bastions of self-interest

Labour’s first stage of government resembles a vast forensic excavation. As it works through the Conservatives’ midden of horrors, it discovers an ever greater legacy of underinvestment, neglect and corruption. However disappointing the new government’s compromises might be, we shouldn’t forget how overwhelming this task must feel.

So I’m sorry to expose yet another toxic stratum. It contains a series of stupendous failures in the governance of rural bodies, which, in the case I want to discuss, put human lives at risk.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

ActionAid says ‘parasitic behaviour’ is fuelling the climate crisis and represents ‘corporate capture’ of public finance

More than $650bn (£494bn) a year in public subsidies goes to fossil fuel companies, intensive agriculture and other harmful industries in the developing world, new data has shown.

The subsidies entrench high greenhouse gas emissions and are fuelling the destruction of the natural world, according to a report from the charity ActionAid.

Exclusive: analysis finds $800bn increase in direct support for activities including deforestation and fossil fuel use

The world is spending at least $2.6tn (£2tn) a year on subsidies that drive global heating and destroy nature, according to new analysis.

Governments continue to provide billions of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies and other spending that directly work against the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement and the 2022 Kunming-Montreal agreement to halt biodiversity loss, the research from the organisation Earth Track found, with countries providing direct support for deforestation, water pollution and fossil fuel consumption.

Thinktank says funding from oil and gas firms is attempt to ‘divert attention from their role in fuelling the climate crisis’

Fossil fuel companies pumped at least $5.6bn (£4.2bn) of sponsorship money into motorsports, football, golf and even snow sports in an effort to “buy social licence to operate”, according to a new report.

Almost no major spectator sport remains untouched by oil and gas money, according to research carried out by the New Weather Institute (NWI), a climate thinktank, which traced more than 200 sponsorship deals between sports teams and the industry.

Nordic country, paradoxically a major oil producer, has set target for all new cars sold to be zero emission

Electric cars now outnumber petrol cars in Norway for the first time, an industry organisation has said.

Of the 2.8m private cars registered in the Nordic country, 754,303 are all-electric, against 753,905 that run on petrol, the Norwegian road federation (OFV) said in a statement.

Two separate reports find policies will save Americans from pollution in coming decades and added nearly 150,000 jobs

The environmental policies of Joe Biden’s administration will save approximately 200,000 Americans’ lives from dangerous pollution in the coming decades and have spurred a surge in clean energy jobs, two independent reports outlining the stakes of the upcoming US presidential election have found.

The first full year of the Inflation Reduction Act, the sprawling climate bill passed by Democratic votes in Congress in 2022, saw nearly 150,000 clean energy jobs added, according to a new report by nonpartisan business group E2.

Climate summit host positioning itself as peacemaker but is accused of ethnic cleansing and imprisoning opponents

The host country of this year’s UN climate summit, Azerbaijan, has been accused of hypocrisy in calling for a global truce to coincide with the conference taking place.

Azerbaijan holds the presidency of the Cop29 summit, which will take place in its capital, Baku, from 11 November for two weeks. Heads of government from around the world are expected and more than 180 countries are likely to be represented.

A koala has been spotted browsing the aisles of an IGA grocery store in regional Australia. Koalas are frequent visitors to the Victorian town of Meeniyan, population 840, but it's the first time one has entered the local supermarket. After 20 minutes exploring, the marsupial was carefully removed from the store with the help of a wildlife carer

• Hands off the koala: why cuddling Australia's iconic marsupial could soon be a thing of the past

Head of sports charity hails partnership that allows local people to use London independent school’s football pitch

Children in the UK urgently need more easy-to-access green space, according to the head of a sports charity calling on private schools to open up their grounds.

Kieran Connolly foundeed Sports Fun 4 All, which offers free football sessions to children in south London, and now works with a local private school that opens up one of its football pitches for his teams.

Cities such as Zurich and Dublin found to have key services accessible within 15 minutes for more than 95% of residents

When Luke Harris takes his daughter to the doctor, he strolls down well-kept streets with “smooth sidewalks and curb cuts [ramps] for strollers at every intersection”. If the weather looks rough or he feels a little lazy, he hops on a tram for a couple of stops.

Harris’s trips to the paediatrician are pretty unremarkable for fellow residents of Zurich, Switzerland; most Europeans are used to being able to walk from one place to another in their cities. But it will probably sound like fantasy to those living in San Antonio, Texas. That’s because, according to new research, 99.2% of Zurich residents live within a 15-minute walk of essential services such as healthcare and education, while just 2.5% of San Antonio residents do.

Cultural protection order has been framed as a push to curry favour with inner-city seats, ignoring grassroots campaigns from Indigenous and non-Indigenous locals

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Among the concerns listed by the 2,000 farmers who converged on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra last week was the protection of prime agricultural land from renewable energy developments.

It has become a common refrain. The National party leader, David Littleproud, warned at the party’s annual federal council on Friday of the risk to prime agricultural land from energy transition projects. The mining magnate Gina Rinehart took to the stage at a business event last year to warn that one-third of Australia’s prime agricultural land could be “taken over” by renewable energy projects. In almost every campaign against a proposed development in the bush, the potential impact on prime agricultural land is raised as a key concern.

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There have been moments of modest progress, but the Albanese government has not lived up to its early rhetoric

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It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Back in the heady new government days of July 2022, Tanya Plibersek told the National Press Club that change was coming for environmental protection in Australia after a decade of disaster and neglect.

Releasing the five-yearly state of the environment report, which the previous Coalition government had received months earlier but put in a drawer until it was turfed from office, the new environment minister said it told a “story of crisis and decline in Australia’s environment”.