The Guardian

Fossil fuels simply don’t check out when it comes to tackling Australia’s rising energy prices while lowering emissions

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When you’re in a bit of a tight hole, it’s quite good advice to first stop digging while you work out how to climb out.

But over the past week, the advice from conservative commentators on tackling Australia’s rising energy prices while lowering emissions has been to keep digging (and drilling).

Satellite tag data suggests five-month-old migratory bird did not stop during voyage which took 11 days and one hour to reach Tasmania

A juvenile bar-tailed godwit – known only by its satellite tag number 234684 – has flown 13,560 kilometres from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania without stopping, appearing to set a new world record for marathon bird flights.

The five-month-old bird set off from Alaska on 13 October and satellite data appeared to show it did not stop during its marathon flight which took 11 days and one hour.

PM said he stood by Tories’ 2019 manifesto policy when asked in Commons, in rebuff to Liz Truss

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Fracking will in effect remain banned under Rishi Sunak’s government, his spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday, saying the new prime minister was committed to the policy in the 2019 manifesto.

The confirmation came after the prime minister told the Commons that he “stands by” the manifesto, which put a moratorium on shale gas extraction.

United Nations says governments need to set new goals and make deeper cuts to limit temperature rises to 1.5C

Pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions will lead to global heating of 2.5C, a level that would condemn the world to catastrophic climate breakdown, according to the United Nations.

Only a handful of countries have strengthened their commitments substantially in the last year, despite having promised to do so at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last November. Deeper cuts are needed to limit temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, which would avoid the worst ravages of extreme weather.

Experts call for tighter regulations as tests find ethoxyquin exceeds maximum limits in Tassal and Petuna salmon

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A fish feed additive banned in the European Union out of concerns for health impacts in animals and humans has been found in Tasmanian salmon at concerning levels, say experts who are calling for tighter regulations.

Dr Christian Narkowicz, an organic chemist, last year commissioned the National Measurement Institute to test salmon for residues of ethoxyquin.

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Shocked at the devastation caused by recent floods in her home country, the photographer Taiwo Aina visited a fishing and farming community where families have lost everything

Analysis finds global practice is a major driver of marine ecosystems’ destruction and is estimated to run up to $50bn

Developing countries are losing billions of dollars due to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which siphons off revenue through illicit financial flows, according to a new study by the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC).

The study reveals that the top 10 companies involved in IUU fishing are responsible for nearly a quarter of all reported cases: eight are from China – led by Nasdaq-listed Pingtan Marine Enterprise Ltd – one is from Colombia and another from Spain.

Before things get totally hysterical over the next few days, let’s talk about what betrayal really looks like

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Let’s start with the obvious. When it comes to soaring energy prices, Labor is in a tight spot.

During the election campaign, and in the months before, Anthony Albanese said Labor’s powering Australia policy would lead to lower power prices. More renewables in the market would reduce household energy bills by $275 by 2025.

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Climate crisis report says ‘we are not winning in any sector’ as experts call for urgent action on fossil fuels

Meat consumption should be reduced to the equivalent of about two burgers a week in the developed world, and public transport expanded about six times faster than its current rate, if the world is to avoid the worst ravages of the climate crisis, research has suggested.

Rates of deforestation must also be rapidly reduced, and phasing out coal must happen about six times faster than is currently being managed. Heavy industries such as cement and steel are not moving fast enough in cutting their emissions, and the rapid growth of renewable energy and electric vehicle adoption must be maintained.

H&M, Sainsbury’s and Nestlé are among more than 300 companies urging governments to agree to the pledge at Cop15 in December

More than 300 businesses, including H&M, Sainsbury’s and Nestlé, have urged world leaders to make it mandatory for companies to assess and reveal their impact on nature by 2030.

Businesses and financial institutions in 56 countries – including the UK, Canada and China – are pushing for governments to agree to the disclosures at Cop15, the UN biodiversity conference being held in Montreal this December.

Reliance on oil and gas worsening climate impacts and compounding food, energy and cost of living crises

The health of the world’s people is at the mercy of a global addiction to fossil fuels, according to a study.

The analysis reports an increase in heat deaths, hunger and infectious disease as the climate crisis intensifies, while governments continue to give more in subsidies to fossil fuels than to the poorer countries experiencing the impacts of global heating.

Freezing relations between the US and China threaten this year’s crucial Cop27 summit

Less than two weeks before Cop27 opens in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, an outline of what to expect from the negotiations is becoming more distinct. The issue of loss and damage is expected to dominate – as it should. Wealthy countries have broken the promise made in 2009 at Cop15 in Copenhagen. An annual climate finance budget of $100bn was agreed then to help the countries most dangerously exposed to global heating to adapt. But contributions have fallen short. The group of countries known as the V20, which includes the Philippines and several small island states, are justifiably angry and determined to ensure that past failures are confronted.

So is Pakistan, which is not part of V20 but suffered catastrophic losses during recent floods. With one-third of its landmass under water and valuable crops destroyed by what one senator, writing in the Guardian, called a “monster monsoon”, the country now faces an immediate crisis as well as a longer-term, existential threat from melting glaciers. Pakistan, with its population of around 220 million people, is responsible for just 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, G20 countries between them produce 80%.

Birds featured in March of the Penguins film face almost complete annihilation by end of century as Antarctic sea ice is lost

The emperor penguin, the tallest and bulkiest of all the world’s penguins, has been officially declared a threatened species by the US government due to the existential risk posed to the birds by the climate crisis.

The penguins, which are endemic to Antarctica, face almost complete annihilation from the loss of sea ice over the course of this century, a situation that has prompted the US Fish and Wildlife Service to place it on the endangered species list, it announced on Tuesday.

New Unicef report finds that in even best-case scenario 2 billion children will face four to five dangerous heat events annually

The climate crisis is also a children’s rights crisis: one in four children globally are already affected by the climate emergency and by 2050 virtually every child in every region will face more frequent heatwaves, according to a new Unicef report.

For hundreds of millions of children, heatwaves will also last longer and be more extreme, increasing the threat of death, disease, hunger and forced migration.

Climate and environment programs in 2022-23 partly funded by redirecting $746.9m from those promised by Coalition

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Labor has revamped Australia’s response to climate change and environmental degradation, redirecting nearly $750m in Coalition commitments, including some spending on gas and carbon capture and storage.

As revealed by Guardian Australia, the first Albanese government budget scrapped a Scott Morrison-era electricity generation underwriting scheme that was promised, but failed, to build up to five new gas-fired power generators and six hydro plants. It also reduced and “realigned” support for CCS away from new fossil fuel developments.

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Victorian authorities say nature of emergency flood management means ‘sometimes difficult and challenging decisions need to be made’

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Trucks began spraying stormwater “full tilt” into the back yard of Bobby Lang’s Echuca home two days ago.

Lang said that since an emergency levee was built to help protect part of the town from recent flooding, those houses within the levee have no outlet for their stormwater, so authorities are pumping it back over the barrier when it rains.

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Nearly nine in 10 farms inspected failed to comply with regulations, according to a report from the Environment Agency

The government’s efforts to protect UK rivers have been labelled an “abject failure” after two-thirds of farms in Devon were found to be causing pollution when inspected by the Environment Agency.

Between 2016 and 2020, the agency visited more than 100 cattle farms in north Devon to check levels of compliance with environmental regulations, particularly around safe slurry storage and spreading.

Hydrologist says flood levels similar to last year but this time the water has nowhere to go, prolonging the disaster

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About 1,500 residents in Narrabri, in the north-west slopes of New South Wales, have been told to evacuate as the flooding crisis continues across swathes of eastern Australia.

There were 129 warnings in place across NSW on Tuesday, including 24 telling people to evacuate or move to higher ground, as swollen rivers threatened homes.

Discovery raises hopes that species may be able to survive global heating despite slower genetic evolution due to their long lifespan

Narwhals have been delaying their seasonal migration because of the impact of the climate crisis, suggesting an ability to adapt to the changing Arctic but increasing the risk that they may become trapped in ice, according to new research.

Narwhals, recognisable by their long spiralled tusk that has earned them the nickname “unicorns of the sea”, inhabit the Arctic waters of Greenland, Canada and Russia. They are a migratory species that spend summer months in ice-free coastal areas before moving to deeper waters between late September and mid-November.

As our leaders feign shock at its severity, the weather continues to undermine even best management practice on the land

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As the rainfall started in northern New South Wales last week, I received a survey from the NSW Farmers Association about the big issues in agriculture.

It asked me to rate the issues in agriculture, which it listed as biosecurity, road and rail infrastructure, workforce, land use pressures and farm productivity, all of which are big. But there was not a mention of the biggest issue of all: extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change.

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