The Guardian

Highly commended images from the wildlife photographer of the year contest. Winners will be announced on 11 October and an exhibition of the 100 award-winning shots will open at the Natural History Museum on 14 October

The technology, put forward as part of the UK’s net zero strategy, could extend the life of fossil fuel infrastructure

Carbon capture and storage schemes, a key plank of many governments’ net zero plans, “is not a climate solution”, the author of a major new report on the technology has said.

Researchers for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found underperforming carbon capture projects considerably outnumbered successful ones by large margins.

The deputy Liberal leader has been taken to task over the ‘totally wrong, wholly incorrect’ claim that no one is making electric utes

Once upon a time in the former Morrison government, policies to promote electric cars were going to “end the weekend”, while the vehicles themselves wouldn’t be able to tow your boat or trailer.

Now in opposition and with Scott Morrison consigned to the backbench, the Liberal party’s deputy leader, Sussan Ley, has continued the EV bashing.

We’ve survived the most wretched season in years. Now everything will be beautiful once more

Well, we did it. Winter is finally dead. And, unlike when a real person dies, we don’t have to pretend there was anything good about it.

Goodbye, winter, a friendless season for losers. I mean this in the rudest possible terms, but particularly this year. Winter is a season for losers and a season for loss. It forces us to become worse versions of ourselves, taking us away from our friends and offering us nothing in return except the opportunity to complete our evening walks on hard mode. Meanwhile, everyone interesting immediately flees for summer in other parts of the world, which draws me into a blood feud with them.

Push for moratorium on offsets comes as NSW’s scheme found to have no strategy for ensuring protection of environment

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The Greens have called for all environmental offsets schemes across the country to be suspended pending an independent review, after the New South Wales system was found to be riddled with integrity concerns and failing to protect endangered species.

It puts the minor party at odds with the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, who planned to use a speech on Thursday to argue that well-designed environmental markets, including those using offsets, could be a “powerful force for good”. She said she hoped Australia may one day be home to a “green Wall Street” that attracted conservation investment from around the world.

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Extreme heat has caused trees to shed their leaves early and summer crops to give up. It’s nature’s equivalent of grabbing whatever you can when leaving a burning building

The first cool mornings, the sweet rot of fallen apples, the sight of seed heads and spent foliage – these are all signs that autumn is here. But what happens when it starts coming earlier? When the floor is littered with burnt leaves, when the summer crops give up early and the flowers fade before all the pollinators get their fill? What has happened is a “false” autumn brought forth by extreme heat and uncertain weather patterns.

The leaves on the ground of your local park and pavements are not the normal autumn leaves, where a deciduous tree has reclaimed as many valuable chemicals as possible from the leaf, so that the colours beneath are exposed, before sending it to ground. The extraction of pigments in a leaf is a slow process that takes trees several weeks, but the blast of extreme heat stole this from the plants and instead they had to slough off resources as they struggled to stay hydrated. These are the leaves we see right now: brown, curled and fried by the sun.

Support amid huge industry profits is a ‘roadblock’ to tackling climate crisis, says International Energy Agency

Global public subsidies for fossil fuels almost doubled to $700bn in 2021, analysis has shown, representing a “roadblock” to tackling the climate crisis.

Despite the huge profits of fossil fuel companies, the subsidies soared as governments sought to shield citizens from surging energy prices as the global economy rebounded from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Group of 40 organisations says deregulation risks irreparable damage to environment, people’s health and workers’ rights

Ditching the UK’s green and social regulations in the bonfire of red tape that both Tory leadership candidates have promised would risk irreparable damage to the natural environment, to people’s health and workers’ rights, a group of 40 organisations has warned.

Health and safety in the workplace could also be threatened if current regulations are abandoned, according to the group. Both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, one of whom will be the next prime minister after a poll of Conservative party members, have indicated they would lead a deregulation drive in government.

The US has set aside $7.5bn for 500,000 stations across the country, but their locations could leave out communities of color

The US government is throwing billions of dollars at building a network of charging stations to help boost uptake of electric cars. But some advocates worry the charging spots will bypass the disadvantaged communities that have until now found electric vehicles well beyond their reach.

In Indiana, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has complained that the state’s draft plan for the rollout of electric vehicle (EV) chargers has not properly consulted people of color, doesn’t specify any chargers in Black-owned businesses and focuses the new infrastructure on highways that cut through neighborhoods, rather than the neighborhoods themselves.

Colonialism and its aftereffects have left regions such as south Punjab resource-starved, poverty-stricken and deeply vulnerable to floodwaters

Devastating flooding in Pakistan has killed more than 1,100 people this summer, injuring and displacing thousands more. Among Pakistan’s political elite, some have claimed that the floods are simply a natural disaster, while others blame climate breakdown. But both groups have failed to address another crucial factor: empire.

Pakistan gained its independence from the British empire in 1947, yet the reverberations of imperialism have endured. As a consequence, peripheral regions such as south Punjab, Balochistan and rural Sindh are resource-starved, exploited and poverty-stricken – factors that have grossly exacerbated the flood’s disastrous effects.

Charity says strategy is unlawful and will allow storm overflows to dump raw sewage for next 28 years

The UK government’s plan to cut millions of hours of raw sewage discharges by water companies each year is facing a judicial review on the grounds that it is unlawful.

The conservationist charity WildFish is calling for the storm overflow reduction strategy, published on Friday, to be withdrawn immediately.

It seems the reef wasn’t ruined by mass bleaching after all – it was probably just sunscreen and wokeism

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Beaches closed after male surfer was bitten by great white shark on Wednesday morning with a drone deployed to search for the animal

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A young surfer has been bitten by a great white shark on the New South Wales Central Coast.

Central Coast council on Wednesday said Avoca and North Avoca beaches were closed after the “shark bite incident” on Wednesday morning.

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The Garma festival returns, pet therapy and politics, Guardian Australia takes a look at the month in pictures

Environmentalists say replacing natural forests with wood plantations to realise shift in construction practices is ‘bonkers’

Building new urban homes from wood instead of concrete and steel could save about 10% of the carbon budget needed to limit global heating to 2C this century, according to a new study.

The overhaul of construction practices needed for such a shift would require up to 149m hectares of new timber plantations – and an increase in harvests from unprotected natural forests – but it need not encroach on farmland, according to the paper by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Aloha Petroleum’s case against AIG could set precedent as to whether firms are protected against climate damage claims

A fossil fuel firm is suing its insurer for refusing to cover a climate lawsuit in a case that could affect the wider industry’s ability to defend itself from litigation.

Aloha Petroleum, a subsidiary of the US-based Sunoco, filed a claim against AIG’s National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh earlier this month, arguing it had failed to protect Aloha from the mounting costs of defending climate-related claims by local governments in Hawaii.

Announcement means 11 of agency’s 14 areas in England now in drought status after record dry spell

All of south-west England is in drought after some of the driest conditions in nearly 90 years, the Environment Agency has said.

The Wessex area – which includes Bristol, Somerset, Dorset, south Gloucestershire and parts of Wiltshire – has been declared in drought status.

Solar and wind projects to expand in size and provide bulk of total American electricity supply by decade’s end, study shows

Renewable energy is set for an unprecedented boom in the US in the wake of its first ever climate bill, with the capacity of solar and wind projects expected to double by the end of the decade and providing the bulk of total American electricity supply, new analysis has shown.

The passage of the legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), will help propel the US towards the forefront of the clean energy economy, experts predict, helping it compete with China on the manufacturing and installation of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and emerging zero carbon technology.

Despite many challenges, December’s crucial biodiversity talks in Montreal may set a new path for humans to live with nature

• What is Cop15 and why does it matter for all life on Earth?

They are known as “the twins”, born in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro but diplomatically separated and left to develop at different speeds. One is the UN’s climate change convention, or UNFCCC, now a fully fledged global agreement with huge annual summits attended by heads of state and rock stars pledging to reduce emissions.

The other, the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD), aims to protect the world’s 10 million species of animals and plants, but it meets less often, is modest by comparison, and has yet to make its mark with the public in the same way as climate.

John Vidal is a former Guardian environment editor

Flooding in Pakistan has killed more than 1,000 people and affected over 30 million, in a catastrophe that is still unfolding. ‘We are witnessing the worst flooding in the history of the country,’ says Dr Fahad Saeed, a scientist with the Climate Analytics group

• ‘Monster monsoon’: why the floods in Pakistan are so devastating