The Guardian

Fridays for Future ‘strikes’ in about 450 places demanded rich countries pay for damage from global warming

Thousands of young people have staged a coordinated “global climate strike” across Asia, Africa and Europe in a call for reparations for those worst affected by climate breakdown.

From New Zealand and Japan to Germany and the Democratic Republic of Congo, activists walked out of schools, universities and jobs to demand rich countries pay for the damage global warming is inflicting on the poor.

In my group, Nanas Against Fracking, we know community organising is not easy. But we are a force to be reckoned with

Hysterical “luddites” funded by Russia was how Jacob Rees-Mogg, in parliament yesterday, described concerned residents opposed to fracking in England. What a slap in the face for those of us who have spent more than a decade trying to protect our communities from the dangerous, polluting shale gas industry. We have never received so much as a rouble or a vodka shot for our efforts.

Here in Lancashire, we actually believed we had won this fight – twice. Our first victory was in 2015, when Lancashire county council rejected planning applications from the fracking firm Cuadrilla for two large sites between Preston and Blackpool. This decision was overruled by Westminster in 2016, and work began in 2017 to transform the Preston New Road site from a field where cows graze into a shale gas site. Nanas Against Fracking, a group I co-founded, started protesting at the site that day too, and continued for more than 1,000 days.

Tina Rothery is a Blackpool resident, campaigner and co-founder of Nanas Against Fracking

Participants view Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy as campaigners bemoan restrictions on right to roam

“Welcome to the night,” beamed a right to roam campaigner welcoming a coach load of city dwellers to the pitch dark stillness of remote Northumberland countryside on a chilly September evening.

The passengers had been attracted by a secretive offer spread on Instagram and by old-school posters pinned up in Newcastle.

Wind could be more productive way than fracking to boost electricity supplies and bring down prices

Kwasi Kwarteng looks likely to lift a de facto ban on new onshore windfarms after the UK government said it would bring planning consent into line with that for other infrastructure.

It has been very difficult for onshore windfarms to get planning permission since David Cameron put in place a tough consent regime in 2015. Earlier this year, Kwarteng pushed for the restrictions to be lifted but he encountered cabinet opposition.

The business secretary has been filmed trying to convince staff at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy that ‘domestically’ produced gas is green, adding that this is why ‘we must get every cubic inch of gas out of the North Sea’. Jacob Rees-Mogg made the comments on Thursday at an internal meeting in which he gave his first address to BEIS staff since taking on the role

• Factcheck: is Jacob Rees-Mogg right that fracking is safe and vital?
  

Studies collectively examined nearly 30,000 samples over the past five years in ‘disturbing’ findings

Toxic PFAS chemicals were detected in every umbilical cord blood sample across 40 studies conducted over the last five years, a new review of scientific literature from around the world has found.

The studies collectively examined nearly 30,000 samples, and many linked fetal PFAS exposure to health complications in unborn babies, young children and later in life. The studies’ findings are “disturbing”, said Uloma Uche, an environmental health science fellow with the Environmental Working Group, which analyzed the peer-reviewed studies’ data.

Cost of safely clearing waste from ageing power stations is soaring, says Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

The cost of decommissioning the UK’s 20th-century nuclear waste could rise to £260bn as the aged and degrading sites present growing challenges, according to analysis presented to an international group of experts.

As the government pursues nuclear energy with the promise of a new generation of reactors, the cost of safely cleaning up waste from previous generations of power stations is soaring.

Mark Menzies challenges business secretary to ‘lead by example’ and start drilling in North East Somerset

Jacob Rees-Mogg should “lead by example” and make his the first constituency to be fracked, a Conservative MP has said.

Mark Menzies, the MP for Fylde, challenged the business secretary to start drilling in North East Somerset before imposing fracking on other constituencies.

Campaigners say revoking of post-Brexit protections amounts to ‘legislative vandalism’

Hundreds of Britain’s environmental laws covering water quality, sewage pollution, clean air, habitat protections and the use of pesticides are lined up for removal from UK law under a government bill.

Environmentalists accused Liz Truss’s government of reneging on a commitment made after Brexit to halt the decline of nature by 2030. They say the revoking of 570 environmental laws that were rolled over from EU law after Brexit amounts to a deregulatory free-for-all leaving the environment unprotected.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a rescued fox, a snub-nosed monkey and beached whales

The Tories were once the party of business. Now all they know how to do is drag Britain back to the 1980s

If Liz Truss believes wholeheartedly in one thing, it’s that nobody likes being told what to do. People don’t want to be nagged about their weight, or nudged to eat less and move more. They don’t want to be told what they can say on social media. And above all, businesses want to be free to make piles and piles of money, unhindered by regulation and red tape and what David Cameron famously called “green crap”. But when she said she didn’t mind making herself unpopular in the process of unleashing all that growth, she didn’t mean with the people doing the growing.

What to make, then, of the fact that this week more than 100 big corporate names from Ikea to Amazon, Coco-Cola and Sky signed an open letter urging the government not to backtrack on net zero, following hints that Truss might be considering doing exactly that? This wasn’t in the script, either for the deregulatory right or arguably that part of the left convinced that capitalism loves nothing more than warming its rapacious hands over a bonfire of crackling red tape, while watching the planet burn. What, exactly, is going on?

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

This weekend’s ballot could see Switzerland also giving farm animals the constitutional right ‘not to be intensively farmed’

Swiss voters will vote on Sunday on whether to ban factory farming as unconstitutional and end imports of intensively farmed meat.

The latest polling shows 52% of voters oppose a ban, and 47% support one. If the factory-farming ballot initiative is passed, Switzerland’s constitution, which already protects the “welfare and dignity of animals”, would be modified to include an animal’s right “not to be intensively farmed”, and new laws would lower animal stocking rates to meet organic standards.

Campaigners say protesters arrested for blocking roads getting ‘lost in prison system’ while on remand

Climate campaigners arrested on suspicion of blocking roads or other offences are waiting up to six months in prison before being tried.

Josh Smith, a 29-year-old stonemason from Manchester, has been held on remand in HMP Peterborough for more than two months.

Energy secretary considers bypassing local planning rules as backbenchers voice opposition

Ministers face a furious backlash from Conservative MPs after overturning a manifesto pledge to pause fracking until it is proved safe, and then indicating drilling could be imposed without local support.

Outlining a return to shale gas extraction in England after three years, Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed worries about earthquakes caused by the practice as “hysteria”, claiming this was often down to a lack of scientific understanding.

Billboards hijacked across Europe to highlight role of airline emissions in climate crisis

As Kate, 23, walked out of Seven Sisters station, in Tottenham, north London, she noticed an airline advertisement attracting unusual attention.

“I was on my way back home, I was coming out of the station, and I saw two people taking pictures of the billboard,” she said. “I thought at first it was just a normal airline ad, so I just walked past. Then I did a bit of a double take.”

Exclusive: Government discussing plans to designate sites as nationally significant infrastructure projects

Liz Truss is considering designating fracking sites as nationally important infrastructure, potentially cutting out local communities and breaking a leadership election promise, the Guardian can reveal.

During her campaign to be the Conservative party leader, Truss said new sites would only go ahead with local consent. However, those familiar with discussions in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, say there have been discussions about pushing through sites without local approval by designating them as nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs).

Energy secretary tells MPs that quakes of 2.5 on Richter scale are routine natural phenomenon

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Opposition to fracking is based around “hysteria” and the public not understanding the Richter scale for seismic activity, Jacob Rees-Mogg has told MPs, after formally lifting the ban on drilling for shale gas in England.

The business and energy secretary told the Commons that the previous limit on the extent of potential earthquake activity caused by fracking – 0.5 on the Richter scale – was too low, and that quakes of 2.5 were a perfectly routine natural phenomenon globally.

Investigation reveals cattle raised on Mỹky territory ended up in global supply chain including food giant

On one side of the fence, in dense forest, the Mỹky people grow their crops: cassava, pequi and cabriteiro fruit. On the other side, ranchers raise cattle on devastated land. That land is the Mỹky’s, they say.

Xinuxi Mỹky, the village elder, says this region used to be a forest where different villages thrived. Only one now remains and the farms have cut into that land as well. “This pasture, where the whites live, was also our village, but now they are raising cattle. The land belonged to us: Indigenous peoples.”

Recent record fire seasons in the west have increased pollution across the country, affecting people’s health, scientists say

Millions of Americans are now routinely exposed to unhealthy plumes of wildfire smoke that can waft thousands of miles across the country, scientists have warned.

Wildfires cause soot and ash to be thrown off into the air, which then carries the minuscule particles that can be inhaled by people many miles away, aggravating a variety of health conditions. The number of people in the US exposed to unhealthy levels of these particulates from wildfires at least one day a year has increased 27-fold over the last decade, a new study found, with 25 million people in 2020 alone breathing in potentially toxic air from fires.

Guardian analysis finds 151 licences already granted threaten environmentally important spots

• England fracking ban lifted – with limits on seismic activity set to be raised

Licences for fracking encroach on some of the most environmentally protected areas in England, including national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty.

As the government lifted the ban on drilling for shale gas, the Guardian analysed where drilling might take place in months and years to come.