The Guardian

In announcing the strategy, climate minister Chris Bowen also took a swipe at the ‘climate inactivism’ of critics of the nascent industry

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The Albanese government has set annual targets of at least 15m tonnes of “renewable hydrogen” by 2050 and dismissed critics who had “gloated” about setbacks to the nascent industry.

The energy minister, Chris Bowen, said on Friday that Australia’s green hydrogen pipeline of projects was “alive and healthy” as he released the government’s new hydrogen production strategy, which updates the 2019 plan he inherited from the Coalition.

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Landslide in Greenland caused unprecedented seismic event that shows impact of global heating, say scientists

A landslide and mega-tsunami in Greenland in September 2023, triggered by the climate crisis, caused the entire Earth to vibrate for nine days, a scientific investigation has found.

The seismic event was detected by earthquake sensors around the world but was so completely unprecedented that the researchers initially had no idea what had caused it. Having now solved the mystery, the scientists said it showed how global heating was already having planetary-scale impacts and that major landslides were possible in places previously believed to be stable as temperatures rapidly rose.

The government’s flood resilience taskforce has met for the first time to plan and discuss pre-emptive measures

The UK faces another autumn and winter of destructive floods, the Met Office has warned.

On Thursday, the government flood resilience taskforce met for the first time to discuss how to proceed when – as seems highly likely – homes, farms and businesses are flooded in the coming months.

Study suggests hydrogel microparticles increase survival by 30% in bumblebees exposed to lethal doses of neonicotinoids

Scientists have developed a “vaccine” for bees against pesticides – and it appears to work, according to an initial study.

According to the findings, published in Nature Sustainability, hydrogel microparticles fed to bumblebees in sugar water caused a 30% higher survival rate in individuals exposed to lethal doses of neonicotinoids, and significantly milder symptoms in those exposed to lower doses that would not usually be lethal but can cause harm.

Rollout of pylons across countryside is cheaper and quicker way to integrate renewable electricity, says energy tsar

The government has ruled out burying electricity cables underground as part of its energy strategy, which will involve the unrolling of millions of pylons across the British countryside, Ed Miliband’s clean energy tsar has said.

Chris Stark, the former leader of the Climate Change Committee, now heads the government’s “mission control” department for decarbonising the grid by boosting renewable energy and building connections across the country.

Language in Senate defense bill is probably first step to shield widely used toxic F-gases from regulation

US lawmakers and the military are pushing for a new definition of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” that would exclude a subclass of toxic compounds increasingly used across the economy and considered to be potent greenhouse gases.

Language included in the defense bill by the Senate armed services committee asks the military to detail how it uses fluorinated gases, or F-gases, stating that the committee is “interested in learning more about how the [department of defense] may or may not be impacted by the definition” of PFAS.

Grand schemes, many backed by government, masquerade as taking action on the environment. They should be disowned

Let’s talk about perceptionware. Perceptionware is technology whose main purpose is to create an impression of action. Whether it will ever work at scale is less important, in some cases entirely beside the point. If it reassures the public and persuades government not to regulate damaging industries, that’s mission accomplished.

Managing perceptions is an expensive business. Real money, especially public money, is spent on fake solutions. Take carbon capture and storage: catching and burying carbon dioxide emissions from power stations, oil and gas fields, and steel and cement plants. For 20 years, it has spectacularly failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, its only clear successes involve enhanced oil recovery: carbon dioxide is used to drive oil out of geological formations that are otherwise difficult to exploit. With astonishing chutzpah, some oil companies have claimed the small amount of carbon that remains trapped in the rocks as a climate benefit. Though it is greatly outweighed by the extra oil extracted, they have, as a result, received billions in government subsidies.

The Earth Commission says hope lies in sustainable lifestyles, a radical transformation of global politics and fair distribution of resources

All of humanity could share a prosperous, equitable future but the space for development is rapidly shrinking under pressure from a wealthy minority of ultra-consumers, a groundbreaking study has shown.

Growing environmental degradation and climate instability have pushed the Earth beyond a series of safe planetary boundaries, say the authors from the Earth Commission, but it still remains possible to carve out a “safe and just space” that would enable everyone to thrive.

Climate Change Authority’s report didn’t even contain a recommendations section, let alone a command to eat less red meat

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The notion that “greenies” are coming for the Aussie barbecue and want to rip that eye-fillet from your cold dead hands is a recurring culture war flash point for many conservatives.

Last week came a flood of media stories and furious commentary that claimed the government’s Climate Change Authority (CCA) had recommended people eat less red meat to bring down greenhouse gas emissions.

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Exclusive: Environment Agency warned about ‘forever chemicals' 20 years before it started to regulate them

The Environment Agency was warned about the “chronic threat” that firefighting foams containing PFAS “forever chemicals” pose to the environment in 2003, 20 years before it started the process of regulating the chemicals, it can be revealed.

In a 200-page report obtained by the Ends Report via a freedom of information request and shared with the Guardian, consultants commissioned by the Environment Agency conducted an environmental review of firefighting foams with a “particular emphasis on their fluorosurfactant content”.

I do not think it is a leap to see our exploitive relationship with Earth as part of a centuries-long war against the environment

Standing on the edge of Utah’s terminal Great Salt Lake is to witness the religion of over-water consumption in the desert. Our thirst is greater than this inland sea can bare as it is disappearing in the shadows of climate chaos, extreme heat and a megadrought not seen in 2,500 years. Twelve million migrating birds depend on this water body for food, rest and breeding. Flocks of Wilson’s phalaropes, small and handsome shorebirds, spin in saline waters creating water columns alive with brine shrimp and flies and resulting in a feeding frenzy. American avocets and black-necked stilts stand stoically in the shallows. Thousands of ducks are sprinkled on the lake like pepper. Water and sky merge as one. There is no horizon. All appears well in this serene landscape of pastel blues animated by birds. It is not.

The health of the Great Salt Lake is only as strong as the health of the human community that surrounds it. And vice versa. If the 2 million people living within the Great Salt Lake watershed with Salt Lake City at its center do not mobilize to put more water in the lake, the death of the Great Salt Lake will be their own. This will also be the demise of millions of migrating birds.

Terry Tempest Williams is a writer, naturalist and activist

I do not think it is a leap to see our exploitive relationship with Earth as part of a centuries-long war against the environment

Standing on the edge of Utah’s terminal Great Salt Lake is to witness the religion of over water-consumption in the desert. Our inland sea is disappearing in climate chaos evidenced by extreme heat and a megadrought not seen in 2,500 years. Ten million migrating birds depend on this water body for food, rest and breeding. Flocks of Wilson’s phalaropes, small and handsome shorebirds, spin in saline waters creating water columns alive with brine shrimp and flies and resulting in a feeding frenzy. American avocets and black-necked stilts stand stoically in the shallows. Thousands of ducks are sprinkled on the lake like pepper. Water and sky merge as one. There is no horizon. All appears well in this serene landscape of pastel blues animated by birds. It is not.

The health of the Great Salt Lake is only as strong as the health of the human community that surrounds it. And vice versa. If the 2 million people living within the Great Salt Lake watershed with Salt Lake City at its center do not mobilize to put more water in the lake, the death of the Great Salt Lake will be their own. This will also be the demise of millions of migrating birds.

Terry Tempest Williams is a writer, naturalist and activist

In the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, forests have been cleared for mines and the roads that service them. Large companies take what they can and move on, leaving abandoned ponds, toxic rivers and scraps of precious metal left in the ground

• Words and photographs by Guerchom Ndebo in Moku with support from the National Geographic Society

Conservationists and botanists express concern over plans for Qatari-funded upscale resort on Assomption Island

The habitat of the largest giant tortoise population in the world is threatened by a Qatari-funded hotel development that aims to bring luxury yachts, private jets and well-heeled tourists to a remote island in the Indian Ocean, conservationists have warned.

Plans for an upscale resort on Assomption, which is part of the Aldabra island group, are currently under discussion by the Seychelles authorities, and construction is already finished on an airport expansion that would allow bigger aircraft to land on the 11.6-sq-km (4.5-sq-mile) coral island.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva says Amazonia suffering its worst drought in more than 40 years

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has flown into the Amazon amid growing alarm over the droughts and wildfires sweeping the rainforest region and others parts of Brazil.

Speaking during a visit to a riverside community near the city of Tefé, the Brazilian president said Amazonia was suffering its worst drought in more than 40 years. He said he had come to discover “what is going on with these mighty rivers” that in some places now resemble deserts.

Rising temperatures causing largest glacier in Dolomites to lose 7-10cm of depth a day, according to scientists

The Marmolada glacier, the largest and most symbolic of the Dolomites, could melt completely by 2040 owing to rising average temperatures, experts have said.

Italian scientists who are monitoring glaciers and the impact of climate emergency, and who took part in a campaign launched by environmentalist group Legambiente, the international commission for the protection of the Alps (Cipra), with the scientific partnership of the Italian Glacier Committee, said on Monday the Marmolada was losing between 7 and 10cm of depth a day.

The Project hopes competition will raise big money for underfunded organisations working to protect beloved species

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Tense competition is brewing between the greater glider and the koala in Australia’s marsupial of the year vote but there are hopes a silky-tailed species that “mates themselves to death” could win over voters and maybe even save it from heading towards extinction.

Network Ten’s The Project launched the competition in collaboration with organisations and charities that work with or help preserve the habitat of marsupials, many of them endangered, in a bid to raise funds for them.

Promise to ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ made at Cop28 climate talks has been left out of draft resolutions

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Campaigners have claimed some of the world’s largest economies are turning their backs on a pledge made last year to transition away from fossil fuels.

Ministers from the G20 group of developed and developing countries, including the US, UK, China and India, will meet in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday to discuss the global approach to the climate crisis.

Under the Tories, non-violent climate protesters were jailed for up to five years – and there is little sign that Labour will change tack

• Linda Lakhdhir is the legal director of Climate Rights International

In December 2023 when Stephen Gingell was sentenced to six months in prison for slow marching for half an hour on the Holloway Road in north London, the sentence was considered shocking. Unfortunately, it is far from the exception. In fact, my organisation, Climate Rights International, has spent the past eight months looking into restrictions on climate protests among western democracies and has found that the UK – mostly under the Conservatives – has introduced some of the harshest anti-protest legislation in recent years.

You may remember Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, who were sentenced to multi-year prison sentences in April 2023 for climbing the cables of the Queen Elizabeth II bridge to object to new oil, gas and coal projects. The three-year sentence imposed on Trowland was, at the time, the longest ever for a climate protest in the UK. But, it has since been surpassed. In July, in a case that made international headlines, five fossil-fuel protesters were sentenced to four- and five-year sentences after participating in a Zoom call about staging climate protests on the M25.

Linda Lakhdhir is the legal director of Climate Rights International

European flat oyster is defined as ‘collapsed’ in UK but there are hopes it could return to coastal waters

A box marked “special delivery” arrived about midday at Spurn Discovery Centre, on a remote East Yorkshire peninsula in the Humber estuary.

It is unlikely the postal worker had any idea it contained 300,000 living oyster larvae – tiny pinprick-sized organisms destined to become part of a new oyster reef just off the English coast.