The Guardian

Campaigners call to prioritise grain for human consumption over its use as a fuel

The US will press ahead with biofuels production, the deputy secretary for agriculture has said, despite increasing concerns over a global food crisis, and calls from campaigners to prioritise grain for human consumption over its use as a fuel.

Jewel Bronaugh, the deputy secretary of agriculture, said US farmers could continue to produce biofuels without harming food production. “We are keeping food security top of mind, but at the same time we also want to remain steadfast in the support and promotion of biofuel,” she told journalists in London, where she met the UK government to discuss a possible trade deal and cooperation on food issues.

1994 agreement allows investors to sue governments for changes in energy policy that harm their profits

Climate activists have said that a deal to update a “dangerous” energy treaty has failed to make the agreement compatible with the urgency of the climate crisis.

After more than four years of talks, 52 countries and the EU on Friday struck a deal to “modernise” the energy charter treaty, a 1994 agreement that allows investors to sue governments for changes in energy policy that harm their profits.

Government generosity meant industry could pollute for free, and airlines were left with 900,000 excess permits they could keep or sell

The UK government gave airlines nearly a quarter of a billion pounds in free pollution permits in a single year, enough for the entire industry to dodge a carbon emissions cap and trade scheme entirely, according to research.

In 2021 the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS), which charges polluters per tonne of carbon emitted, handed airlines 4.4m free allowances and the industry only surrendered 3.4m back. In effect, UK taxpayers covered the entire cost of aviation industry emissions, plus some to spare.

The writer expected climate change and surveillance but not the wreckage of the entire global system, or our willing submission to monitoring

So many of the worst things of our time would not have been particularly shocking in the time of George Orwell. After all, he and his contemporaries lived through the rise of the Third Reich, the swift corrosion of the Russian revolution into Stalinist authoritarianism, Franco’s brutalisation of Spain, Mussolini’s reign in Italy, and masses ready to cheer on all the villains, drink up the delusions and lies they spread, and even serve as their butchers. The kleptocratic Trump, the totalitarianism-aspiring Putin, Kim Jong-un in North Korea, Lukashenko in Belarus and the rest of the rogues’ gallery of demagogues and dictators are nothing new. The invasion of Ukraine echoes the Stalinist regime’s brutality there in the 1930s.

Ahead of an opening lecture at the Orwell festival of political writing, I have been thinking about what his mindset might have been, and it occurs to me that two things in our time would have shocked him. One of them is climate change. That human beings had wrecked bits and pieces of the natural world was perfectly evident in the coal-mining districts that Orwell had visited in 1936 for his research for his book about the working class and their conditions, The Road to Wigan Pier. That there was much that was filthy and poisonous about industrial capitalism and fossil fuel was clear from the smogs of Pittsburgh and London, where the air quality then was more or less comparable to the air quality of New Delhi and Shanghai now, and just as deadly.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a rare albino otter, a wild toki bird and a big-eared opossum

Cancelling poor nations’ historic debts would allow their governments to channel money into climate adaptation

It has proved too easy to stop people uniting around the crucial issues of our time. Those who demand better pay and conditions for workers and justice for poor people have been pitched by demagogues and corporate lobbyists against those who demand a habitable planet.

For years, we have struggled with the question of how to overcome this division and create a social and environmental justice platform that could unite vast numbers of the world’s people. Only one thing was clear: any such campaign had to be led by activists from poorer nations. Now, I believe, the breakthrough has arrived.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

‘Fortress’ game reserves displaced the Maasai but ignore the pastoralists’ role in maintaining wildlife and biodiversity

The recent violent evictions of Maasai in Loliondo, Tanzania, to make way for a luxury game reserve is the latest in a long list of examples of community owners of land suffering under a “fortress conservation” model adopted in the heyday of colonialism. And what for? So that others, be they wealthy tourists or royalty, can use swathes of land as their playgrounds.

Tanzanian authorities, and other African governments, shoulder the unenviable “duty” of seeing to it that the pursuit of such fun is not jeopardised or hindered by the desire of thousands, if not millions, of people to reclaim their rights to land and to survive on that land.

Conservationists who re-established the raptors in the UK with birds from Spain are now returning the favour

When red kites were reintroduced in England more than 30 years ago, young birds were brought over from thriving populations in Spain. Now the carrion-feeding raptor is doing so well that English chicks – with distant Spanish ancestry – are being flown back to Spain to boost ailing numbers there.

Fed on culled grey squirrels and meticulously checked by vets, 15 chicks collected from nests in Northamptonshire are this week travelling to southern Spain where they will be held in special aviaries in the countryside until they are mature enough to be set free.

After Russia’s rejected agreed catch limits, Britain unilaterally licensed boats to hunt toothfish near Antarctica – a move the US says breaches international rules

A diplomatic row has broken out between the UK and the US over efforts to conserve a deepwater species of fish near Antarctica, as Russia obstructs attempts to set catch limits.

Last year, amid tensions with the west over Ukraine, Russia rejected catch limits for Patagonia toothfish – also known as Chilean seabass – set by a 26-member fishing regulatory body, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

Conservationists say exploitation of amphibians leading to depletion of native species abroad

A voracious appetite for frogs’ legs among the French and Belgians is driving species in Indonesia, Turkey and Albania to the brink of extinction, according to a report.

Europe imports as many as 200 million mostly wild frogs every year, contributing to a serious depletion of native species abroad.

Dairy Crest sentenced for repeatedly breaching environmental permit at Davidstow creamery

One of the UK’s biggest dairy firms has been fined £1.5m for repeatedly polluting a river near its Cornwall factory and causing local residents to suffer years of noxious smells – but the problems are continuing.

Dairy Crest was sentenced on Thursday at Truro crown court for repeatedly breaching its environmental permit at Davidstow creamery in Camelford. The site, the UK’s largest dairy processing facility, makes Cathedral City cheese, Clover and Country Life.

If we can’t dramatically cut meat consumption then intensive ‘factory farming’ may be comparatively less risky, say authors

The industrial farming of animals such as pigs, poultry and cattle to provide meat for hundreds of millions of people may reduce the risk of pandemics and the emergence of dangerous diseases including Sars, BSE, bird flu and Covid-19 compared with less-intensive farming, a major study by vets and ecologists has found.

Despite reports from the UN and other bodies in the wake of Covid linking the intensive farming of livestock to the spread of zoonotic (animal-borne) diseases, the authors argue that “non-intensive” or “low-yield” farms pose a more serious risk to human health because they require far more land to produce the same amount of food.

Out of 14 nations surveyed, UK citizens measured lowest for their oneness with the natural world

From the romantic poets to the global reach of Sir David Attenborough, Britain has a reputation for being a nation of nature lovers.

But the citizens of this supposedly green and pleasant land are ranked bottom of 14 European nations measured for their “nature connectedness”, according to a new study.

Analysis reveals 73% of remaining fragments of rare temperate rainforest in England are not under protection

Nearly three-quarters of England’s remaining temperate rainforests do not have any official protection, according to new analysis, as a campaign urges the public to help identify, protect and expand what remains.

Just 18,870 hectares (46,624 acres) survives in England from an ecosystem that once stretched from Cornwall to the west of Scotland, having slowly been cleared by humans over the centuries. Seventy-three per cent of the country’s remaining fragments of temperate rainforest, a species-rich habitat, are not designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), despite their importance for biodiversity. Many are threatened by overgrazing, pollution and invasive species.

Earth Photo, the international photography competition, has announced its 2022 shortlist. Created by Forestry England and the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), Earth Photo celebrates photographs and videos that tell stories about the planet, its inhabitants and its future. The exhibition is open at the Royal Geographical Society in London from now until 26 August 2022

Risk of significant tsunami within next 30 years is nearly 100%, Unesco says, as it urges coastal cities to become ‘tsunami-ready’

A tsunami could soon hit major cities on or near the Mediterranean Sea including Marseille, Alexandria and Istanbul, with a nearly 100% chance of a wave reaching more than a metre high in the next 30 years, according to Unesco.

The risk of a tsunami in Mediterranean coastal communities is predicted to soar as sea levels rise. While communities in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, where most tsunamis occur, were often aware of the dangers, it was underestimated in other coastal regions, including the Mediterranean, Unesco said.

Chilly weather can instinctively make us doubt the climate crisis. To understand how the planet is warming, we need to watch the long-term trends

It’s an offhand joke a lot of us make – it’s freezing, can we get a bit more of that global warming right about now?

But how should we really conceive our day-to-day weather in the context of climate change, especially when Australia’s east coast is enduring a colder-than-normal start to winter? Here are four ways.

Three of the national park’s five entrances have opened as the damage is still being assessed after rare and record flooding

Park managers raised the gates at three of Yellowstone national park’s five entrances on Wednesday, reopening part of America’s oldest park for the first time since a devastating deluge caused historic floods that destroyed roads, bridges and buildings earlier this month.

Hundreds of cars, trucks and recreational vehicles lined the open entryways in anticipation, an indication that many visitors stuck to their plans despite uncertainty last week about when the park would reopen. Before the extreme weather, park managers were already bracing for the throngs of tourists expected this summer, following its busiest year on record, which drew more than 4.8 million people.

Sky News’s Rowan Dean also attempts a snow job on conflating climate with weather

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Coalition MPs are in the middle of a post-defeat debate over climate targets, but there appears to be a large Paris-shaped blind spot in their current commentary.

Speaking to the ABC at the weekend the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, was asked repeatedly if he would support the Albanese government’s target of a 43% cut by 2030.

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Exclusive: New resources minister also says ‘the pathway from coal to renewables goes only through gas’

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The Albanese government could sign up to Joe Biden’s push to limit global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by the end of the decade, as part of efforts to signal Australia has turned a corner on climate ambition.

Australia’s resources minister, Madeleine King, confirmed the new government was considering signing the global pledge, but stressed no final decision would be taken without careful consultation.

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