The Guardian

Exclusive: A further 35,000 flights have operated almost empty, with climate campaigners calling the revelations ‘shocking’

More than 5,000 completely empty passenger flights have flown to or from UK airports since 2019, the Guardian can reveal.

A further 35,000 commercial flights have operated almost empty since 2019, with fewer than 10% of seats filled, according to analysis of data from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). This makes a total of about 40,000 “ghost flights”.

Tony Juniper urges government to ‘foster both economic and environmental growth’

Liz Truss has been issued a veiled warning over new government policies by the head of Natural England, who says “even bankers need to eat, drink and inhale clean air”.

Tony Juniper, chair of the nature watchdog, has outlined the vital relationship between the economy and nature in Wednesday’s Guardian, as charities across the country revolt over government plans to slash nature protections and potentially remove environmental requirements from farming subsidies.

Our economic system depends on the natural world. Growth that results in the destruction of nature will, in the end, cease

As we debate how best to integrate environmental and economic goals, it is perhaps worth remembering that even central bankers need to eat, drink and inhale clean air. Food and water security, protection from climatic extremes, the carbon cycle, public health and the replenishment of the very air we breathe all depend on nature. It is less that nature is part of our economy, and rather that our entire economic system is a wholly owned subsidiary of nature.

During recent years there has been a series of expert reviews revealing the scale of the social and economic risks that accompany the continued degradation of nature. Some interpret these findings as a reason to oppose economic growth. The key question is, however, not about growth per se, but the style and quality of growth that we pursue. Growth that results in the destruction of nature will, in the end, cease. Economic development that, by contrast, moves toward net zero greenhouse gas emissions and the recovery of nature is a very different prospect.

Tony Juniper CBE is chair of Natural England. Before taking up this role in April 2019, he was executive director for Advocacy and Campaigns at WWF-UK, a Fellow with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and president of the Wildlife Trusts

Corporate bonds intended to inject liquidity into markets profited companies engaged in deforestation

Some of the world’s biggest central banks are unwittingly helping to finance agri-business giants engaged in the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon, according to a report published on Wednesday.

The Bank of England, the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are among the institutions that have bought millions of dollars in bonds issued by companies linked to deforestation and land-grabbing, according to the report Bankrolling Destruction, published by the rights group Global Witness.

As most of the media, beholden to those who would uphold the status quo, downplay the most critical issue of all, our mission is to put the environment front and centre

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What is salient is not important. What is important is not salient. Most of the time, most of the media obsess over issues of mind-numbing triviality. Much of the world’s political journalism is little more than court gossip: who’s in, who’s out, who said what to whom. At the same time, issues of immense, even existential importance are largely or entirely ignored.

With the exception of all-out nuclear war, all the most important problems that confront us are environmental. None of our hopes, none of our dreams, none of our plans and expectations can survive the loss of a habitable planet. And there is scarcely an Earth system that is not now threatened with collapse.

At 6am I have a jar of fresh steam from roasting native figs. That keeps me going until my brunch of organic twigs at 11

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There are many reasons to suggest a deal to save the natural world is possible in Montreal, if division can be overcome and the Brazilian president doesn’t cause problems

We are at the beginning of a busy end to the year. The summer holidays are over in the northern hemisphere, the world economy is creaking into recession, war is raging in Ukraine and there is the small matter of the most important biodiversity conference in more than a decade: Cop15.

Money will ultimately decide the fate of the summit and the ambition of the final text in Montreal this December, as will the mood after the climate Cop27, which ends two weeks earlier.

In a series of dispatches ahead of the Cop15 UN biodiversity conference in Montreal in December, we will be hearing from a secret negotiator who is from a developing country involved in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework negotiations.

Exclusive: Birkbeck, University of London, is first institution to blacklist firms ‘most responsible for destroying the planet’

Fossil fuel companies have been banned from recruiting students through a university careers service for the first time. The new policy from Birkbeck, University of London, states its careers service “will not hold relationships of any kind with oil, gas or mining companies”.

The decision follows a campaign, supported by the student-led group People & Planet, to cut off recruitment pathways to fossil fuel companies. The campaign is now active in dozens of UK universities.

State of the World’s Birds report warns human actions and climate crisis putting 49% in decline, with one in eight bird species under threat of extinction

Nearly half of the planet’s bird species are in decline, according to a definitive report that paints the grimmest picture yet of the destruction of avian life.

The State of the World’s Birds report, which is released every four years by BirdLife International, shows that the expansion and intensification of agriculture is putting pressure on 73% of species. Logging, invasive species, exploitation of natural resources and climate breakdown are the other main threats.

We’re holding off getting a couch till the wet season passes – I’ve lost far too much velvet to the Wilson River. Living in a flood plain means not ever fully resting

For me the sound of rain has changed, as it has for many people in the northern rivers from a peaceful backdrop for slumber and a giving life force to a warning sign to not get complacent.

The sound now carries with it a weight, and a knowing, of the power that can hide behind it. I have seen water in places the mind can’t fathom in its absence, yet the evidence remains as a daily reminder. A tricycle high in the tree out the front on the verge, windows and doors to house after house, sky-high on stilts, silent, open and gaping, revealing the holes that have been left in so many lives.

Too many technical difficulties to overcome to make it a viable low-carbon heating fuel, say researchers

Hydrogen is unsuitable for use in home heating, and likely to remain so, despite the hopes of the UK government and plumbing industry, a comprehensive review of scientific papers has concluded.

Hydrogen lobbyists are out in force at the Labour party conference this week, sponsoring several events in Liverpool, and will be plentiful at the Conservative party conference that begins this weekend.

Keir Starmer used his speech on the third day of the Labour conference in Liverpool to outline the party's plans for clean power in the UK. He said that within a year of being elected, Labour would set up Great British Energy, a new publicly owned company that would supply the UK with clean power. 

The Labour leader said it was time for the party to start a new chapter 'about how we build a fairer, greener, more dynamic Britain by tackling the climate emergency head on, and using it to create the jobs, the industries and the opportunities of the future'

• Keir Starmer promises Labour will launch publicly-owned UK energy company if elected – politics live

UK government criticised for reviewing plan to pay farmers for environmental protection

One of Liz Truss’s favourite rightwing thinktanks has criticised the government for considering ditching a much-vaunted new funding structure for farmers, calling the existing subsidy system “a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to landowners”.

Truss has announced plans to review the environmental land management scheme (Elms), where farmers would be paid for environmental protection, in order, potentially, to go back to largely area-based payments. The plans were criticised as being “deeply economically inefficient” and for encouraging “laziness” by the Institute of Economic Affairs.

RSPB, National Trust and others call on supporters to write to MPs as they argue ‘nature is not a negotiable luxury’

Environmental charities are mobilising their millions of members to take on the UK government over what they say is an attack on nature in the push for growth.

Groups including the RSPB, the National Trust, the Wildlife Trusts, and Wildlife and Countryside link are encouraging supporters to put pressure on Conservative MPs over proposals that they say strike at the heart of environmental and wildlife protections.

The removal from the statute books of 570 laws derived from EU directives that make up the bedrock of environmental regulations in the UK, covering sewage pollution, water quality and clean air. These include the habitat regulations, which have protected areas for wildlife for more than 30 years.

The ending of the moratorium on fracking.

The creation of low-tax investment zones from Cornwall to Cumbria where environmental protections would be relaxed to encourage development.

The feared scrapping of the post-Brexit environmental land management scheme (Elms), which pays farmers to enhance nature.

Zoologists say they have never seen this low a number, after unprecedented hot weather

As dewy dawns break across the UK’s pumpkin patches and allotments, gardeners across the land are waking up to the absence of at least one slippery pest. Slug numbers appear to have shrivelled as a result of the ongoing drought.

“I went to survey a woodland site last week and it took me over 30 minutes to locate a slug. Usually, I would expect to find them under almost every log in that habitat,” said Jake Stone, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge. “I thought that there would be fewer around, but I’ve never seen this low a number. But I suppose that’s to be expected, because it’s rarely been this hot and dry.”

EU financial watchdog blames small fines and feeble controls in some states for amount of illegal seafood

Illegally fished seafood continues to end up on the plates of EU citizens due to weak controls and insignificant fines in some member states, auditors have found.

The European Union, the world’s largest importer of fishery products, requires member states to take action against fishing vessels and EU nationals engaged in illegal fishing activities anywhere in the world.

Exclusive: report on species recovery shows how effective legal protection, habitat restoration and reintroductions can be

• Back from the brink: how bison, bears and beavers returned to Europe

Wolves, brown bears and white-tailed eagles are among the top predators making a comeback across Europe, according to a major report that looks at how some wildlife is rebounding.

Researchers analysed data on 50 wildlife species whose population size and geographical distribution have expanded over the past 40 years to show how effective legal protection, habitat restoration and reintroductions can drive species recovery.

More than 24,000km of pipelines planned around world, showing ‘an almost deliberate failure to meet climate goals’

More than 24,000km of new oil pipelines are under development around the world, a distance equivalent to almost twice the Earth’s diameter, a report has revealed. The projects, led by the US, Russia, China and India, are “dramatically at odds with plans to limit global warming to 1.5C or 2C”, the researchers said.

The oil pumped through the pipelines would produce at least 5bn tonnes of CO2 a year if completed, equivalent to the emissions of the US, the world’s second largest polluter. About 40% of the pipelines are already under construction, with the rest in planning. Global carbon emissions must drop by 50% by 2030 to keep on track with internationally agreed targets for limiting global heating.

Though they are the most well known, magpies are not the only Australian swoopers

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For the first time in Sean Dooley’s two decades of bird watching, he has been swooped twice this year by a nesting male magpie.

The magpie had met its match, however. Dooley works at Bird Life Australia, an organisation dedicated to conserving native birds and their habitats, and knows how to avoid a swoop without damage to the person or bird.

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Prominent members of farmers’ union express dismay after comments by Minette Batters

Farmers are threatening to quit the National Farmers’ Union after its leader said she supported the UK government’s apparent move to scrap post-Brexit nature subsidies.

This weekend, the Observer revealed that the government was poised to abandon the “Brexit bonus”, which would have paid farmers and landowners to enhance nature, in what wildlife groups have described as an “all-out attack” on the environment.