The Guardian

Drought group preparing to meet as Met Office issues highest fire risk warning for much of England

An official drought could be declared for parts of England on Friday as rising temperatures and tinderbox conditions prompted the Met Office to issue its highest warning under its fire severity index.

The National Drought Group – made up of civil servants, the Environment Agency, water companies and other groups including the National Farmers’ Union – is due to meet on Friday to discuss the longest dry spell since 1976.

Drax has taken £5.6bn in subsidies from energy bill payers but business secretary says practice is ‘not sustainable’

The importing of wood to burn in Drax power station “is not sustainable” and “doesn’t make any sense”, the business and energy secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, told a private meeting of MPs this week.

The remarks are significant as the burning of biomass to produce energy is an important part of the UK government’s net zero strategy and has received £5.6bn in subsidies from energy bill payers over the last decade. Scientists and campaigners have long argued that burning wood to produce electricity is far from green and can even increase the CO2 emissions driving the climate crisis.

Campaigners told new deadline for decision on first new deep coalmine in more than 30 years is 8 November

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A much-anticipated decision on whether the UK’s first new deep coalmine in more than 30 years should go ahead has been delayed again.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) has written to Friends of the Earth to inform the organisation that the new secretary of state, Greg Clark, has set a new deadline of 8 November to rule on whether the coalmine should be granted planning permission.

Adam Bandt says allowing global offsets to be traded along with Australian ones would just delay action to cut emissions

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The Greens have called on the Albanese government to reject advice that Australia should allow greater use of international carbon offsets, arguing it would delay cuts in greenhouse gas emissions locally.

A review of international offsets by the Climate Change Authority, a policy advisory body, urged the government to develop a carbon market strategy as a step towards allowing international carbon offsets to be traded along with Australian carbon credits.

Smoke and flames swirled in a tornado-like pattern as hot winds met a wildfire in southern California.

The fire near Quail Lake in Gorman closed portions of Route 138 northwest of Los Angeles.

The LA county fire department tweeted that crews were making good progress on the fire and that no structures were threatened

• Death toll rises to four in California’s biggest wildfire this year

The Nature TTL Photographer of the Year winner has been chosen from more than 8,000 images from all over the world. From a scarred lion getting its close-up to a fish with a mouthful, entrants competed to secure category wins in wild portraits, animal behaviour, camera traps, underwater, the night sky, small world, landscapes, urban wildlife and under-16, with the overall winner chosen from the category wins

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The Amazon absorbs huge amount of CO2 and helps to cool the world, but recent studies have shown the rainforest is approaching a tipping point, with profound implications for the global climate and biodiversity. The section in Brazil, which has suffered the most deforestation since 2006, is already producing more carbon than it absorbs, and there are worrying signs that the rest of the forest is not far behind. Josh Toussaint-Strauss investigates how the Amazon has reached this point, and how agriculture and Brazilian politics are playing a central role  

Resources minister praises gas industry as ‘ally’ of renewable energy and says she will work with states and territories to encourage new supply

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The Albanese government will continue to support new fossil fuel projects so long as they “stack up” from an economic and environmental perspective, the federal resources minister says.

Labor rejected the Greens’ demand that there be no new fossil fuel projects during negotiations over the climate bill. The government is pushing states and territories to expand domestic gas supply as it attempts to shore up the local market.

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Senex Energy says extra fuel will be for domestic use but plans are yet to secure state or federal environmental approvals

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Gas producer Senex, which is jointly owned by South Korea’s steel giant Posco and Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart, has planned a more than $1bn expansion to its Queensland gasfields with the bulk of the extra fuel apparently to be earmarked for domestic use.

The company, which is reportedly yet to secure federal environmental approval for the expansion of its Atlas and Roma North projects in the Surat Basin, made the announcement ahead of a speech by the resources minister, Madeleine King. It still has to clear some state regulatory hurdles, Senex said.

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Time to fix Britain’s broken private utility model, whereby natural monopolies are able to dupe weak regulators

When the water industry was in public hands, it was claimed to work neither for its owner – the state – nor the public. Since being privatised in 1989, water companies have enriched investors and senior executives but failed to adequately invest in infrastructure. Shareholders have been paid £72bn in dividends. The cash came from big debts, with companies borrowing £56bn, and big bills, with prices rising 40%. Private-sector efficiency did not provide better service, but it did allow companies to be milked for cash.

Companies’ pressing concern was to make money rather than think hard about the challenge of the climate emergency. Hence water companies will impose hosepipe bans in record-breaking summer heat despite up to a fifth of water being lost to leaks. Two companies restricting water use – South East Water and Southern Water – have some of the worst environmental records. Thames Water, which will ban lawn watering for its 15 million customers, was fined £20m in 2017 for tipping 1.4bn litres of raw sewage into rivers. Last year the firm was found to have illegally discharged untreated sewage for 735 days.

AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin among businesses study says not on track to meet global climate goals to limit heating to well below 2C

• Australia should abandon goal to limit global heating to 1.5C, says gas company eyeing Beetaloo Basin
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Nine out of 10 major Australian electricity companies are failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to meet the goals of the landmark Paris climate agreement, a study has found.

Businesses not acting in accordance with the 2015 Paris agreement goal of limiting global heating to well below 2C since pre-industrial times included the generators and retailers AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin, according to the study led by University of Queensland researchers.

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Mining could begin in less than a year after talks fail to produce regulatory framework despite growing calls to halt harm to oceans

The negotiations on opening the world’s first deep-sea mines ended in Kingston, Jamaica, last week with no agreement, meaning that less than a year remains before a legal clause kicks in that could see seabed mining commence without any environmental or economic regulations in place.

Three weeks of discussions on the “two-year rule” at the council headquarters of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) – the UN body that oversees mining in international waters – ended in stalemate on 4 August. The two-year rule was triggered in July 2021 when the Pacific nation of Nauru declared its plan to start seabed mining.

Trees are advancing into the Arctic tundra and retreating from boreal forests further south, where stunting and die-offs are expected

Forests from the Arctic to the Amazon are transforming at a “shocking” rate due to the climate crisis, with trees advancing into previously barren tundra in the north while dying off from escalating heat farther south, scientists have found.

Global heating, along with changes in soils, wind and available nutrients, is rapidly changing the composition of forests, making them far less resilient and prone to diseases, according to a series of studies that have analyzed the health of trees in north and South America.

Melting of the world’s biggest ice sheet would cause catastrophic sea level rise, but can be avoided with fast climate action

The fate of the world’s biggest ice sheet rests in the hands of humanity, a new analysis has shown. If global heating is limited to 2C, the vast East Antarctic ice sheet should remain stable, but if the climate crisis drives temperatures higher, melting could drive up sea level by many metres.

The East Antarctic ice sheet (EAIS) holds the vast majority of Earth’s glacier ice. Sea levels would rise by 52 metres if it all melted. It was thought to be stable, but is now showing signs of vulnerability, the scientists said.

Study suggests waste disposal system of the creatures, which look like little chimneys, is more complex than thought

Birds do it, reptiles do it, and humans do it with an almighty “achoo!” – now it has emerged that sponges can also sneeze, casting off accumulations of particles trapped in mucus on their surface in the process.

The team behind the research said that while the aquatic organisms had previously been observed making contractions, which they had dubbed “sneezes”, the details of the process remained unclear.

Public urged to be take precautions after second large landslide along Jurassic region in two weeks

Experts are urging the public to be hypervigilant on south coast beaches as this week’s heatwave could trigger cliff collapses.

One geologist said the area seemed the most vulnerable and beachgoers should take heed of official guidance.

Antony Blinken announces formal working group during Kinshasa visit, while voicing concerns over auction of oil and gas permits

The US and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have agreed to form a working group to protect the enormous Congo basin rainforest and peatlands, which are threatened by oil and gas exploration.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, made the announcement in Kinshasa on Tuesday while expressing his concern over the sale of dozens of oil and gas permits in the DRC that included blocks in Virunga national park and the Cuvette Centrale tropical peatlands, part of an area described as “the worst place on the planet” to drill for oil and gas.

Obsession with efficiency means infrastructure has been run into the ground rather than upgraded

The government is drawing up contingency plans for power cuts this winter as it finally wakes up to the reality of what the next few months will bring.

Britain has a cost of living crisis. It also has a housing crisis and an energy crisis. Weeks without rain in southern England mean there is a looming drought crisis. The NHS is only one serious Covid-19 outbreak away from crunch point.

Invasive species on islands: Macquarie Island, a Unesco world heritage site, was being eaten alive until an ambitious eradication programme restored it

• Driving out invasive species on islands has high success rate and big benefits – study

On a world map, Macquarie Island is a speck in the Southern Ocean, but for ecologists it is a beacon, illuminating a future for grand-scale environmental recovery projects.

Melissa Houghton first set foot on the 34km-long green streak as a dog handler in late 2011. Rabbits, cats, rats and mice had been introduced by sealers in the 1800s and were wreaking havoc on the world heritage site. At their peak, there were approximately 300,000 European rabbits and an untold number of black rats and house mice.

New research finds that eradicating non-native rats, cats, rabbits and goats is 88% effective in restoring biodiversity

Eradicating rats, goats and other invasive animals from islands is one of the most effective tools for protecting wildlife, resulting in dramatic transformations to degraded archipelagos and atolls, according to a new study.

From the dodo to Daudin’s giant tortoise, island species have been disproportionately affected by extinctions, often caused by the arrival of alien species brought by colonisers that killed wildlife found nowhere else on Earth.