The Guardian

Ed Miliband criticises Liz Truss’s ‘anti-green-energy dogma’ after plans to ban solar projects revealed

Labour has criticised prime minister Liz Truss’s plan to ban solar power from most of England’s farmland and vowed to treble the renewable energy source in its first term.

Ed Miliband, the shadow climate secretary, will visit a solar farm on Friday. He is to lay out his opposition to plans by Truss and her environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, who the Guardian revealed earlier this week are hoping to ban solar from about 41% of the land area of England, or about 58% of agricultural land.

There is no mandate for the anti-green agenda of Liz Truss’s government

The latest schism to open up in Liz Truss’s cabinet is less surprising than it might have been, had divisions over tax and welfare policies not already emerged. But the decision by the business secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg, to oppose her publicly over solar energy plans is still a dramatic one that leaves her looking even weaker and more exposed. Having previously stressed his support for fracking, and oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, Mr Rees-Mogg used an article in the Guardian to deny that he opposes green energy. While Ms Truss wants to restrict new solar installations on farmland, Mr Rees-Mogg’s deregulatory fervour extends beyond fossil fuels to renewables as well.

Ms Truss’s anti-solar scheme is so ill-judged that all voices raised against it are welcome. But Mr Rees-Mogg’s enthusiasm for new oil and gas means that he must never be mistaken for a friend to green causes. He is right to point out that carbon-intensive imports are just as damaging to the atmosphere as UK-based industries. But while his backing for solar and wind may make him a more consistent free-marketeer than the prime minister – who is against red tape except when it blocks something she dislikes – the risks to the environment from all those like him who champion growth at the expense of nature remain huge.

EV Council figures show uptake lags behind other countries with carmakers opting to send stock to faster-growing markets

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New electric vehicle sales within Australia have increased by 65% in 2022 but uptake still lags far behind other countries.

Electric cars now represent 3.39% of all new car sales in Australia according to the latest State of Electric Vehicles report by the Electric Vehicle Council, but the figures pale against those in other nations such as the UK, where one in five new cars are electric.

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Fylde council, home to Preston New Road shale gas site in Lancashire, unanimously backs motion

A Conservative-led council in Lancashire has voted unanimously to demand the government stick to its manifesto commitment against fracking, and to demand clarity on what constitutes “local consent” for the controversial form of energy extraction.

Fylde council is home to Preston New Road, the only site in Britain which has been fracked, by the energy company Cuadrilla. Operations there caused small earth tremors, breaching the regulated limits and prompting the government to implement a moratorium on fracking in November 2019.

The climate minister says new domestic drilling for oil and gas will help the UK reach net zero by 2050. Is he right?

The UK climate minister, Graham Stuart, has urged Britons to support domestic drilling for oil and gas, which he claimed were green policies that would help the country reach net zero by 2050.

Do his assertions reflect reality?

Caroline Lucas will table bill which would extend countryside access to woods and green belt

People across England are right to trespass to stand up for their right to roam, Caroline Lucas has said.

The Green MP will table a bill later in October to allow the public to access woodlands and the green belt in the same way they can currently walk on the coast path.

Natural England chief says pledge to stop biodiversity loss by 2030 will not be met if scheme is cut

The government will not meet its commitments to stop biodiversity loss by 2030 if it scraps new payments to incentivise wildlife-friendly farming in England, the head of its nature watchdog has said.

Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, told the environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, in a letter this week that if the government did not keep its commitment to move from area-based farm payments to “public money for public goods” – rewarding farmers for work to replenish soil, prevent floods and restore pollinators – it will not meet its legally binding target to halt biodiversity decline by 2030.

Peak body says assurances given and must be upheld or trust with rural Australia ‘will be broken’

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The Albanese government has provided assurances that farmers will not be hurt if Australia signs on to Joe Biden’s global pledge to cut global methane emissions by 30% by 2030, the National Farmers Federation (NFF) says.

Guardian Australia revealed in June that Labor was considering signing the pledge, and the agriculture minister, Murray Watt, on Thursday said he was “comfortable if we sign up to it”, although he said the government had not yet signed off on the commitment.

Wildlife has an amazing ability to recover – but only if we keep vital legal protections in place

In the latest of what can often seem like the “final nails in the coffin” of biodiversity across Europe, we heard in recent weeks that UK environmental protection is under threat. But while the global scale of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss remain alarming, vital new research, which I helped lead, shows there are also heartening examples of European wildlife bouncing back from the brink.

For the past two years, we at the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology, along with colleagues at BirdLife International and the European Bird Census Council, have been investigating the fortunes of 50 European wildlife species over the past 50 years, from humpback whales to Iberian wild goats to white-tailed eagles. Each of these species are incredible comeback stories, and researching how they have recovered has been a refreshing and inspiring endeavour – the Eurasian beaver and European bison, for example, have both increased in average relative abundance by more than 16,000% since 1960.

Photographer Gideon Mendel visited Sindh province in Pakistan after the worst floods in living memory this summer killed more than 1,500 people and left millions homeless.

The portraits, part of his Drowning World project, are a powerful reminder of the impact of the climate crisis on the poorest people on the planet

PM wants to prevent panels on 58% of farmland but business secretary says renewables need to be boosted

• Jacob Rees-Mogg: I’m no green energy sceptic

Liz Truss is facing a rebellion from Jacob Rees-Mogg’s business department over plans to ban solar power from most of England’s farmland.

The prime minister and her environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, want to ban solar from about 41% of the land area of England, or about 58% of agricultural land, the Guardian revealed earlier this week.

Critics suggest our growth agenda conflicts with the need to achieve net zero. They couldn’t be more wrong

• Truss and Rees-Mogg on collision course over solar power

It is always intriguing to see my own views through the lens of a newspaper refracted away from what I think. Although I am no admirer of Extinction Rebellion, I can assure Guardian readers that I am not a “green energy sceptic”. I am in favour of intelligent net zero in which green energy will play the biggest role.

I’m proud to belong to a country that has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% since 1990, while growing the economy by over 70% in that time.

Government’s oceans review also presents grim picture of species under threat of extinction including seabirds and mammals

Microplastics are found in three of every four of New Zealand’s fish, huge portions of indigenous seabirds and marine species are threatened with extinction, and warmer oceans are becoming uninhabitable to native species, a stark new government report on the state of the country’s oceans has found.

The ministry of environment’s marine stocktake, released on Thursday, lays out a grim picture of species under threat. It found that 90% of indigenous seabirds, 82% of indigenous shorebirds, 81% of assessed marine invertebrate species and 22% of marine mammal species were classified as threatened with extinction or at risk of becoming threatened with extinction.

Science body’s information on shale gas fracking treads lightly when it comes to naming methane’s role in global heating, despite it being second only to CO2

Gas companies have their eyes on the Northern Territory where they hope to frack their way to – in the words of the federal government – a “world-class gas province”.

This week, one executive claimed the territory’s Beetaloo Basin held “Australia’s greatest emissions reduction opportunity” – a claim swiftly ridiculed by climate groups.

Over the past few weeks, flood emergencies have swept across NSW while Sydney smashed its record for highest annual rainfall, last marked in 1950. So how much rainfall have we had this year, and what can we expect from a third La Niña event?

• Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates
• Sydney on track for record annual rainfall of 2.2 metres as eastern states brace for flooding
  
• Police urge drivers to stay off flooded roads after NSW man dies in submerged car
  

Huge scale of human-driven loss of species demands urgent action, say world’s leading scientists

Earth’s wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% in just under 50 years, according to a leading scientific assessment, as humans continue to clear forests, consume beyond the limits of the planet and pollute on an industrial scale.

From the open ocean to tropical rainforests, the abundance of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles is in freefall, declining on average by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 2018, according to the WWF and Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) biennial Living Planet Report. Two years ago, the figure stood at 68%, four years ago, it was at 60%.

Dozens of environmental protesters and supporters of Insulate Britain blocked central London roads outside the Houses of Parliament as Liz Truss faced prime minister's questions.

At around 11.30am on Wednesday, 26 supporters blocked the roads around Parliament Square at two points demanding the government pledge to insulate homes in the UK.

Several groups of supporters of the Just Stop Oil campaign also stood in protests behind Downing Street. The roadblocks were part of the Just Stop Oil coalition’s month-long campaign of non-violent civil resistance across central London

Group’s London return comes as Met chief says climate action is not yet so disruptive that he must shut it down

Supporters of Insulate Britain have joined Just Stop Oil protesters on the streets of London, as the chief of the Metropolitan police said daily protests by climate activists had yet to reach a legal threshold of causing “major disruption” required for the force to shut them down.

Just after 11am on Wednesday, about two dozen members of the group, which shot to fame last autumn with a series of blockades of major London roads, walked into the road outside parliament, sat down and glued themselves to the ground.

Graham Stuart tells MPs that awarding more than 100 licences for North Sea drilling is a green policy

Fracking and drilling for new oil and gas in the North Sea is green and good for the environment, Liz Truss’s new climate minister said on Wednesday.

Graham Stuart insisted that awarding more than 100 licences to companies for North Sea drilling, covering almost 900 locations, and rolling out fracking across the countryside, were green policies. He told MPs on the environmental audit committee that drilling for new fossil fuels would help the UK reach net zero by 2050.

Study finds chemical companies dodging federal law designed to track how many PFAS plants are pumping into environment

Chemical companies are dodging a federal law designed to track how many PFAS “forever chemicals” their plants are discharging into the environment by exploiting a loophole created in the Trump administration’s final months, a new analysis of federal records has found.

The Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act put in place requirements that companies discharging over 100lbs annually of the dangerous chemicals report the releases to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But during the implementation process, Trump’s EPA created an unusual loophole that at least five chemical companies have exploited.