The Guardian

Dozens of environmental protesters and supporters of Insulate Britain blocked central London roads outside the Houses of Parliament as Liz Truss faced prime minister's questions.

At around 11.30am on Wednesday, 26 supporters blocked the roads around Parliament Square at two points demanding the government pledge to insulate homes in the UK.

Several groups of supporters of the Just Stop Oil campaign also stood in protests behind Downing Street. The roadblocks were part of the Just Stop Oil coalition’s month-long campaign of non-violent civil resistance across central London

Group’s London return comes as Met chief says climate action is not yet so disruptive that he must shut it down

Supporters of Insulate Britain have joined Just Stop Oil protesters on the streets of London, as the chief of the Metropolitan police said daily protests by climate activists had yet to reach a legal threshold of causing “major disruption” required for the force to shut them down.

Just after 11am on Wednesday, about two dozen members of the group, which shot to fame last autumn with a series of blockades of major London roads, walked into the road outside parliament, sat down and glued themselves to the ground.

Graham Stuart tells MPs that awarding more than 100 licences for North Sea drilling is a green policy

Fracking and drilling for new oil and gas in the North Sea is green and good for the environment, Liz Truss’s new climate minister said on Wednesday.

Graham Stuart insisted that awarding more than 100 licences to companies for North Sea drilling, covering almost 900 locations, and rolling out fracking across the countryside, were green policies. He told MPs on the environmental audit committee that drilling for new fossil fuels would help the UK reach net zero by 2050.

Study finds chemical companies dodging federal law designed to track how many PFAS plants are pumping into environment

Chemical companies are dodging a federal law designed to track how many PFAS “forever chemicals” their plants are discharging into the environment by exploiting a loophole created in the Trump administration’s final months, a new analysis of federal records has found.

The Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act put in place requirements that companies discharging over 100lbs annually of the dangerous chemicals report the releases to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But during the implementation process, Trump’s EPA created an unusual loophole that at least five chemical companies have exploited.

Committee report says government approach on guiding people in tackling climate crisis is muddled and inadequate

A third of the UK’s emissions reductions must come from people’s behaviour changing, a House of Lords committee has said.

A report published on Wednesday by the upper house’s environment and climate change committee urged ministers to lead a public campaign and use regulations and taxation to guide public behaviour change in order to stop the decline of nature and reach legally binding net zero targets.

The winners of the Natural History Museum’s prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. Karine Aigner’s remarkable image of a buzzing ball of cactus bees spinning over the hot sand on a Texas ranch won the Grand Title award. ‘Wings-whirring, incoming males home in on the ball of buzzing bees that is rolling straight into the picture. The sense of movement and intensity is shown at bee-level magnification and transforms what are little cactus bees into big competitors for a single female,’ said chair of the jury, Rosamund Kidman Cox

• The winners will be on display at the Natural History Museum in London

The PM’s vision of growth is part of the class war that is transferring power from Britain’s poorest people to its richest

As a founder member of the anti-growth coalition, I’m delighted to discover how fast it has, ahem, been growing. From small beginnings on the political margins, our grouping, according to the prime minister, now ranges across most political parties, the trade unions, remainers, media pundits, in fact just about everyone in the UK who isn’t a swivel-eyed neoliberal headbanger.

For many years, a small band of us “voices of decline” and “enemies of enterprise” who “don’t understand aspiration” have been trying to point out that increments in gross domestic product do not equate to increments in happiness. We have argued that no one wins the human race. We have sought to explain that what mainstream economists call progress is what ecologists call planetary ruin. We’ve contended that infinite growth on a finite planet is a recipe for catastrophe. I hope Liz Truss is right to claim that so many people now accept our arguments.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Two-time winning kākāpō absent from annual poll amid concerns the parrot may take the spotlight from less charismatic birds

New Zealand’s annual bird of the year competition could usher in another round of controversy, with perennial favourite the kākāpō struck from the ballot after twice winning the competition.

The fat, flightless and nocturnal parrot is the only species to reign twice as New Zealand’s favourite bird, in 2020 and 2008. This year, however, it will be conspicuously absent, amid concerns that its continued dominance could divert the spotlight from less charismatic candidates.

Federal treasurer Jim Chalmers to attend meeting of Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action in Washington this week

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The Albanese government has left open the possibility that Australia could introduce carbon tariffs as part of a suite of climate policies to help the global shift to net zero emissions by 2050.

The former Morrison government railed against Europe’s proposal for a carbon border adjustment scheme, calling it “just a new form of protectionism that will undermine global free trade and impact Australian exporters and jobs”.

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Autumn Water Watch survey aims to build national picture of pollution, plastic litter and invasive species

The public are being asked to take part in the first national water watch to survey rivers, streams and canals as part of a monitoring project.

The Autumn Water Watch aims to follow the success of the Big Garden Birdwatch and the Big Butterfly Count, in which hundreds of thousands of people record observations to feed into a national picture.

England is finally protecting the beavers that could save our failing rivers – if they’re permitted to be released into the wild

On Saturday 1 October, something remarkable happened. The Eurasian beaver was officially recognised as both a “native” and a “protected” species under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017. In England, that means it is now illegal to deliberately kill, injure, or capture the world’s second largest rodent, or disturb their dams, lodges or burrows without a licence.

Essentially, the change is legislative wordplay, yet anyone with half an ear to the ground is heaving a sigh of relief. Instead of being classed as “no longer normally present” on the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, beavers are now “native”, placing them alongside the barn owl and the corncrake. Beavers in England join their Scottish cousins in the filing cabinet of animals under special protection – populations of which have been classified as European Protected Species (EPS) since 2019.

Sophie Pavelle is the communications coordinator for Beaver Trust. She is also an ambassador for the Wildlife Trusts, sits on the RSPB England advisory committee and is the author of Forget Me Not: Finding the forgotten species of climate-change Britain

Workers on urban fringe driving EVs would bring greater emissions cut as they’re more likely to drive larger, older cars on longer commutes

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Australian workers with long commutes should receive tax breaks for buying electric vehicles, according to a new report into the technology.

The recommendation was one of three policies proposed in a study from KPMG Australia that investigated the uptake of electric vehicles in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

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Here are some of the top images in the global photography competition which attracted more than 100,000 entries from 196 different countries and territories. The competition is divided into six categories: people and nature, landscape, water, wildlife, climate, and plants and fungi

Use of toxins must be justified, but the sad reality is a similarly effective alternative to the lethal pesticide doesn’t exist

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We may not like it, but killing feral animals is an action we need to take if we truly care for Australia’s environment and wildlife.

As an island nation with a trove of unique wildlife that evolved in isolation, Australia is highly susceptible to invasive species.

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Incomes have stalled while the rich get richer. It’s clear the obsession with GDP has to change

Liz Truss was clear what she wanted. “I have three priorities for our economy,” the prime minister told the Conservative party conference last week: “Growth, growth and growth.” But her problem is that this is not actually clear at all.

The definition of economic growth is an expansion of national income, as measured by GDP (gross domestic product). Since the 1950s it has been the objective of more or less all governments to have GDP growing every year.

Michael Jacobs is professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield

Alexander Darwall lodges papers seeking end to camping on moorland without permission

A wealthy landowner is pressing ahead with legal moves that could threaten the right of backpackers and youth groups to wild camp on Dartmoor.

A small group of right-to-roam activists built a protest camp over the weekend on the estate owned by Alexander Darwall and his wife, who are challenging the legal basis of bylaws that allow for wild camping on the moor, despite a growing outcry from local people, hikers and environmentalists.

Beccy Speight says charity coalition plans to step up campaign against changes posing threat to wildlife

The head of the RSPB says the bird charity is ruling nothing out as it organises a mobilisation of millions of people against what it calls the government’s “attack on nature”.

Beccy Speight dismissed accusations by Conservative MPs that the group was lying to its members and pursuing a marketing drive, as it leads a coalition campaigning against the government over key “growth” policies which it argues will damage wildlife and nature.

The removal from the statute books of 570 laws derived from EU directives that make up the bedrock of environmental regulations in the UK, covering sewage pollution, water quality and clean air. These include the habitat regulations, which have protected areas for wildlife for more than 30 years.

The ending of the moratorium on fracking.

The creation of 38 low-tax investment zones from Cornwall to Cumbria where environmental protections are to be relaxed to encourage development.

The feared scrapping of the post-Brexit environmental land management scheme (Elms), which pays farmers to enhance nature.

Monica Medina will be responsible for biodiversity and water resources, announces state department ahead of Cop15

The United States has created a new diplomatic role to show the country’s commitment to tackling the biodiversity crisis ahead of Cop15 in Montreal, Canada, where the next decade of nature targets will be drawn up.

Monica Medina, a former military officer who started her governmental career in 1989 as senior counsel to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, has been named special envoy for biodiversity and water resources.

Low pressure from Atlantic likely to usher in 70mph gusts from Friday night

The UK and northern Europe are likely to be the windiest places on the planet this weekend. Areas of low pressure, driven by a strengthening jet stream, is forecast to barrel in from the Atlantic on Friday, with some of these likely to become named storms.

Up to 70mph (112 km/h) gusts are expected to batter the west coast of Ireland and the Faroe Islands, with Norway’s western coastline also likely to experience strong winds into Saturday. Further stormy conditions are possible the following week when areas of deep, low pressure arrive from the west.

About 250 whales beached on remote Chatham Islands just days after another stranding involving similar number of mammals

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Hundreds of pilot whales have stranded on New Zealand’s remote Chatham Islands just days after a nearby beaching resulted in 250 mammals dying or being euthanised.

About 250 whales came ashore at Pitt Island/Rangiauria in the second stranding, taking the total number of whales stranded on the Chatham Islands to 500-odd, the general manager of Project Jonah, Daren Grover, said on Monday. The project runs a stranding hotline and mobilises marine rescues.