The Guardian

A flawed government plan for workers adds to problems as growers apply to pull down 60 hectares of greenhouses

Huge areas of one of Britain’s biggest salad growing hubs will be replaced with housing estates, as growers give up in despair, and cash in their land.

The Lea Valley, also known as the cucumber capital and Britain’s salad bowl, is one of the diamonds of the UK’s embattled horticultural sector. The Lea Valley Growers Association (LVGA), seeded through an area running across Greater London, Essex and Hertfordshire, comprises more than 180 hectares (450 acres) of glasshouses, run by 80 growers. The valley should be a jewel in the crown for a country concerned with homegrown industry and food security.

Milder winters could threaten crop yields as plant-eating insects spread northwards and become more voracious, researchers say

Agricultural pests that devour key food crops are advancing northwards in the US and becoming more widespread as the climate hots up, new research warns.

The corn earworm (Helicoverpa zea) is considered to be among the most common farm pests in the US, ravaging crops such as maize, cotton, soya and other vegetables. It spends winter underground and is not known to survive in states beyond a latitude of 40 degrees north (which runs from northern California through the midwest to New Jersey), but that is changing as soils warm and it spreads to new areas, according to research led by North Carolina State University.

A serial denier of human-driven climate breakdown, Jair Bolsonaro has been criticised in the past for failing to protect the Amazon rainforest and its native communities.

Now, with less than a month before Brazilians cast their ballot in the country's presidential elections on 2 October, using architectural techniques and satellite technologies, researchers at Forensic Architecture, in cooperation with the Climate Litigation Accelerator, have examined evidence of crimes against Indigenous people and the true impact of Bolsonaro's policies as he seeks a second term

• Large parts of Amazon may never recover, major study says
  
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Future of Mount Pleasant project to be decided by federal environment and water minister, Tanya Plibersek, but activists say it is ‘reckless’ and should be rejected

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The New South Wales Independent Planning Commission has approved a coalmine expansion in the state’s Upper Hunter region that would cause almost 1bn tonnes of carbon emissions.

The decision will allow MACH Energy to double the output of its Mount Pleasant mine in Muswellbrook to 21m tonnes a year and extend its life to 2048.

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Ban Ki-moon and Laurence Tubiana say greater ambition needed as climate bill debated in Senate

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Global climate figureheads have welcomed Australia’s increased climate commitments under the Albanese government as a “positive first step”, but said the country needs to do more to match other developed countries and play its part in efforts to limit global heating to 1.5C.

Ban Ki-moon, the former United Nations secretary general, and Laurence Tubiana, known as one of the architects of the Paris climate agreement, told a Canberra conference by video that Labor’s climate change legislation and enhanced commitment to the United Nations were welcome changes. But both said more was needed.

Regulator looking at 26 incidents, with seven involving very large volumes which far exceed amounts subsequently licensed

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NSW authorities are investigating several major “unexplained” incidents where 200GL of flood water – equivalent to nearly half the volume of Sydney harbour – was harvested by irrigators during floods in western NSW in late 2020 and early 2021.

NSW estimates was told last week 26 separate incidents were under investigation. Seven involve very large volumes which far exceed the amounts that were subsequently licensed.

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By 2050, Africa’s 1bn children will bear the brunt of the climate crisis, yet they have no say in decisions largely made by old men

It is ironic that Africa – sometimes called the “youngest continent” due to the average age of its population being below 20 – has the oldest leaders in the world. Ten of Africa’s political leaders are over 75; the average age of an African president is 62.

According to the Global Center on Adaptation, young people in Africa are often excluded from politics precisely because Africa has its oldest generation squarely at the helm of political leadership.

Ecologists urge people to monitor for platypuses in their area after indications of a ‘severe decline’ in Ipswich

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There are fears that platypus populations might have been wiped out by recent floods in greater Brisbane, sparking new calls for the species to be nationally recognised as threatened.

While the platypus is endangered in South Australia and was listed as vulnerable in Victoria last year, the iconic monotreme is not officially considered threatened in Queensland and New South Wales.

Janildo Oliveira Guajajara had recently taken part in an Amazon assembly organised by murdered Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira

A rainforest activist from one of Brazil’s leading Indigenous protection groups has been killed just weeks after participating in an Amazon assembly organised by the murdered Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira.

Janildo Oliveira Guajajara, a member of the Guardiões da Floresta (Forest Guardians) collective, was reportedly shot dead in the early hours of Saturday near the Araribóia Indigenous territory where he lived.

The new PM has not set out plans for reducing energy waste; instead she has talked of more oil and gas

Liz Truss faces a daunting array of environmental crises, from energy supply to sewage spills on British beaches, with little to show that she has the inclination to take them on.

Ben Goldsmith, the chair of the Conservative Environment Network, and a longtime green Tory who was a strong supporter of Boris Johnson, said of the UK’s new prime minister and her defeated rival: “Neither Truss nor Sunak has been known for their passion for nature. Neither has made a name for themselves as an environmental leader.”

Swathes of rainforest have reached tipping point, research by scientists and Indigenous organisations concludes

Environmental destruction in parts of the Amazon is so complete that swathes of the rainforest have reached tipping point and might never be able to recover, a major study carried out by scientists and Indigenous organisations has found.

“The tipping point is not a future scenario but rather a stage already present in some areas of the region,” the report concludes. “Brazil and Bolivia concentrate 90% of all combined deforestation and degradation. As a result, savannization is already taking place in both countries.”

The EU’s classification of wood fuels is accelerating the climate crisis. Next week, a key vote can change that

Next week the future of many of the world’s forests will be decided when members of the European parliament vote on a revised EU renewable energy directive. If the parliament fails to change the EU’s discredited and harmful renewables policy, European citizens’ tax money will continue to pay for forests around the globe to literally go up in smoke every day.

Europe’s directly elected representatives now have to choose: they can either save the EU’s “climate targets” with their legislative loopholes or they can begin saving our climate, because right now, that is not what EU targets are working towards.

Labor is under pressure on climate policy from Greens who propose ban on high-carbon projects

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Anthony Albanese has promised to work with the resources sector to “reduce emissions in a predictable and orderly way” as Labor comes under increased pressure from the Greens to ban emissions intensive projects.

Albanese made the comment to the minerals industry parliamentary dinner on Monday, suggesting the “cooperation and dialogue” Labor achieved at the two-day jobs and skills summit “should be the rule” not a “48-hour exception”.

Do you have small children? Allow yourself a brief moment of stark mind-numbing terror at what you have done – and then move on

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If Cop27 fails to bring the major polluters to heel, the global south will be forced to act on its own

• Mustafa Nawaz Khokar is a senator in Pakistan

What we’ve witnessed this summer in Pakistan is nothing short of a climate catastrophe. First came the early heatwaves that brought an end to spring, reducing crop yields and increasing the rate of glacial melt. Then came the monsoon downpours that lasted for days on end and wreaked havoc across the country. One-third of Pakistan is now underwater. More than 1,200 people have been killed and more than 33 million people affected. And the monster monsoon isn’t over yet.

Experts say the heavy rainfall was caused by higher than average warming of the Arabian Sea. In Sindh province, which produces half the country’s food, 90% of crops are ruined. More than 75% of Balochistan, which covers half of Pakistan, is partially or completely damaged. People’s homes and patches of land are inundated. Of the 650,000 pregnant women who have been directly affected in flood-hit areas, 73,000 will be delivering their babies this month. The sheer scale of destruction those children will be born into is unimaginable.

Mustafa Nawaz Khokar is a senator in Pakistan. From 2009 to 2013, he served as the adviser to the prime minister of Pakistan on human rights

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With a hearing expected later in the year, the outcome could have far-reaching consequences for revenue raising from electric vehicles, lawyers say

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A stoush between the commonwealth and states over electric vehicle taxes has moved closer to a high court hearing in a process carrying wide-ranging implications for revenue raising, lawyers say.

In September 2021, two drivers of electric cars launched a high court challenge that argued the imposition of a tax of 2-2.5 cents per kilometre by the Victorian government was unconstitutional because the state does not have the constitutional power to impose such fees.

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Deanne Criswell makes admission as ‘extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation’ hits Georgia

Flood maps used by the federal government are outdated, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or Fema, said on Sunday, considering a series of devastating floods caused by excessive rainfall induced by climate change.

Deanne Criswell told CNN’s State of the Union: “The part that’s really difficult right now is the fact that our flood maps don’t take into account excessive rain that comes in. And we are seeing these record rainfalls that are happening.”

The chance of extreme events is increasing because emissions aren’t slowing down. The hard work to transform the economy has barely begun

You don’t have to be paying much attention to be aware that the climate and environmental crises are not slowing down.

The flooding in Pakistan is estimated to have submerged a third of the country’s habitable land, destroyed more than a million homes, crippled infrastructure, farms and clean water supplies and killed at least 1,200 people. Tens of millions have had their lives disrupted. The fallout will include food and housing shortages and rising disease.

Conservationists call on government to reconsider project near Darwin after 100-plus birds were spotted in bushland marked for clearing

The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, is being urged to intervene to save a population of endangered Gouldian finches threatened by a defence development in the Northern Territory.

The first stage of clearing has begun to allow a defence housing development in savannah woodlands at Lee Point, in Darwin’s north, having been approved in 2019.

It’s a monstrous thought, but politicians who disparage net zero as a ‘new religion’ and wind power as ‘medieval’ are tipped for cabinet posts

What a strange, heady, anxious summer that was. For all the talk by many journalists and politicians about the cost of living crisis as something that will decisively arrive in the autumn, it is already here. At the same time, the landscape of this small corner of northern Europe is parched and straw-coloured, while those terrifying images of flooding in Pakistan have illustrated the climate emergency’s even more nightmarish flipside. The pandemic, it turns out, was merely one more crisis on the way to something completely convulsive: payback for our fragile dependence on fossil fuels, and a way of living that is no longer sustainable. With perfect timing, next weekend will see the return to London’s streets of Extinction Rebellion, whose protests will trigger the usual sneers from climate deniers while hammering home 2022’s awful sense of urgency.

Meanwhile, as if the immediate future is being decided by a TV scriptwriter who specialises in the bleakest comedy, Liz Truss is seemingly about to move into Downing Street, after two months of surreal and largely pointless debate in which the climate crisis has barely figured. She and Rishi Sunak may have paid lip service to the government’s nominal target of achieving net zero by 2050 – but, whatever their other differences, they have largely spoken with one voice on climate policy: the cursory, slightly bored tone of people who think of it as an optional extra.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist