The Guardian

Regulators allow states to continue spreading sludge even as PFAS-tainted substance has ruined livelihoods and poisoned water

States are continuing to allow sewage sludge to be spread on cropland as fertilizer and in some cases increasing the amount spread, even as the PFAS-tainted substance has ruined farmers’ livelihoods, poisoned water supplies, contaminated food and put the public’s health at risk.

Michigan and Maine are the only two states in the US to widely test sludge, and regulators in each say contamination was found in all tested samples. Still, in recent months, officials in Virginia increased the amount of sludge permitted to be spread on farmland without testing for PFAS, while Alabama regulators have rejected residents’ and environmental groups’ pleas to test sludge for the chemicals.

Why not dress all the swift parrots in salmon outfits? Then the Tassie government will jail anyone who goes within 50 metres of one!

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Poor nations exhort UN to consider ‘climate-related and justice-based’ tax on big fossil fuel users and air travel

The world’s most vulnerable countries are preparing to take on the richest economies with a demand for urgent finance – potentially including new taxes on fossil fuels or flying – for the irrecoverable losses they are suffering from the climate crisis, leaked documents show.

Extreme weather is already hitting many developing countries hard and forecast to wreak further catastrophe. Loss and damage – the issue of how to help poor nations suffering from the most extreme impacts of climate breakdown, which countries cannot be protected against – is one of the most contentious problems in climate negotiations.

The world will have released more planet-heating emissions than have occurred since the industrial revolution, analysis found

Burning the world’s proven reserves of fossil fuels would emit more planet-heating emissions than have occurred since the industrial revolution, easily blowing the remaining carbon budget before societies are subjected to catastrophic global heating, a new analysis has found.

An enormous 3.5tn tons of greenhouse gas emissions will be emitted if governments allow identified reserves of coal, oil and gas to be extracted and used, according to what has been described as the first public database of fossil fuel production.

Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Sydney’s inner west is taking part in the Turtles in Schools program which aims to encourage future generations to take care of the environment. Led by Western Sydney University, the program is currently in a trial phase, with select New South Wales schools. By 2023, up to 10 turtle tanks will be installed in schools. By 2024, the program will be available to all year 5 and 6 classrooms across the country

• Teaching with turtles: the NSW program turning school students into conservationists

Winning the 2024 climate talks could pressure Australia to rejoin the Green Climate Fund, increase its 2035 emissions target, and ditch new coal and gas developments

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If the Albanese government has its way, in two years’ time up to 20,000 people – political leaders, diplomats, lobbyists, activists and professional greenwashers – will spend a fortnight in Sydney (or maybe Brisbane or Melbourne) in what will inevitably be described as an attempt to save the planet.

Labor promised before the election that if it won power it would bid to host a Cop (a conference of the parties to the United Nations framework convention on climate change), hopefully in partnership with Pacific island neighbours.

Schools host the reptiles and visit them in wetlands. Environmental groups say it augurs well for an activist future

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When students from Lithgow visited wetlands near their primary school west of Sydney, they quickly picked up on a problem: there was nowhere for turtles.

“A bunch of students said there are no logs or rocks here, so where are they going to bask?,” Assoc Prof Ricky Spencer, from Western Sydney University, said. “I thought, that is a good point.”

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Along with subsidising big polluters, governments are setting in place repressive anti-protest laws to protect them

The climate crisis accelerates. Anti-protest laws proliferate.

These developments are not unrelated.

Researchers hope to learn about movement of small birds using solar-powered devices tracked by satellite

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A joint plan to save an endangered bird species from extinction is benefitting from an experimental tool – tiny solar-powered backpacks.

Plains wanderers are small, fawn-coloured, ground-dwelling birds with speckled throats that live in the semi-arid grasslands of north-western Victoria and the New South Wales Riverina.

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Behavioural ecologist says 77-year-old Western Australian owner was probably seen by the hand-reared animal as a fellow marsupial

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Kangaroos are often considered friend, not foe. But the marsupial’s reputation took a hit this week when a 77-year-old Western Australian man was killed by the pet western grey he hand-reared from a joey.

As Peter Eades lay dying on his Redmond farm, 398km south of Perth, police were forced to shoot the three-year-old male kangaroo, which was preventing an ambulance crew from reaching the injured man.

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A new film celebrates the 1980s battle to protect the Tasmanian environment, but now protest rights in Australia are under attack

The imagery is iconic, etched into the Australian national consciousness. Pristine Tasmanian wilderness. Bulldozers trying to destroy it. A man with nothing more than a placard, desperately trying to stop heavy machinery with his bare hands. Masses of people taking to city streets. Bodies, and campsites, in the path of construction. Heavy-handed police intervention. The power of the people against the power of the state.

This past comes rushing back through archival footage in Franklin, a new feature-length documentary on the most significant environmental protest campaign in Australian history: the battle to save Tasmania’s wild, white-water river. The film has a happy ending: the protesters won and the Franklin still runs today.

Fury as ‘explosive’ files reveal largest oil companies contradicted public statements and wished bedbugs upon critical activists

Criticism in the US of the oil industry’s obfuscation over the climate crisis is intensifying after internal documents showed companies attempted to distance themselves from agreed climate goals, admitted “gaslighting” the public over purported efforts to go green, and even wished critical activists be infested by bedbugs.

The communications were unveiled as part of a congressional hearing held in Washington DC, where an investigation into the role of fossil fuels in driving the climate crisis produced documents obtained from the oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP.

Exclusive: Prof Lesley Hughes, a climate specialist appointed this week, says current target is not good enough

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A new scientific member of the government’s revamped Climate Change Authority has said Australia should be aiming to reach net zero at least a decade earlier than 2050.

Prof Lesley Hughes, a biologist and climate change specialist, said Australia’s current climate target for 2030 was “not good enough” but said the new government was showing a willingness to listen to the science.

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Campaigners who blockaded Staffordshire oil terminal remanded for refusing to comply with court proceedings

More than 50 protesters who are demanding urgent action to address the climate crisis were sent to jail on one day this week after refusing to comply with court proceedings.

The campaigners, who were appearing before judges at two separate hearings in London and Birmingham, had broken an injunction to take part in a blockade of the Kingsbury oil terminal near Tamworth in Staffordshire on Wednesday.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a transparent crustacean, an anteater and relaxing kangaroos

The King is no woolly liberal. He’s the head of a hereditary monarchy that is ultimately focused on its own survival

The tone was sombre, emotional even. Prince Charles could not, he said, describe the “depths of his personal sorrow”.

But he wasn’t speaking of his recent bereavement. This was a speech back in June to Commonwealth heads of government in Rwanda, expressing regret for the suffering wrought by slavery. The Commonwealth could not move forward without acknowledging the “wrongs of the past”, he said.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Just one day after the Queen’s death, another deeply sobering study related to the dangers of exceeding 1.5C of global warming was published

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The death of Queen Elizabeth II continues to reverberate globally. The ensuing media frenzy, rabid and ravenous at times, has been quite something to behold. I cannot think of another event or issue that’s received even remotely a similar amount of attention in recent times.

I am not here to argue about the merit and contributions of the Queen and the royal family though, nor a long overdue transition to an Australian republic, or the far too often overlooked, disregarded and darker history and confronting issues, including maintenance of power structures and the ongoing damage and ravages of state-sanctioned colonialism. That is not my place nor area of expertise, and I genuinely want to extend my sincere condolences to all who are saddened and suffering, whatever their reason, and whatever cultural background, political and personal persuasion they may have.

Charity says 19 million people facing starvation in report highlighting link with extreme weather

Extreme hunger is closely linked to the climate crisis, with many areas of the world most affected by extreme weather experiencing severe food shortages, research has shown.

The development charity Oxfam examined 10 of the world’s worst climate hotspots, afflicted by drought, floods, severe storms and other extreme weather, and found their rates of extreme hunger had more than doubled in the past six years.

Study says climate crisis likely to have significantly increased rainfall and made future floods more likely

The intense rainfall that has caused devastating floods across Pakistan was made worse by global heating, which has also made future floods more likely, scientists have found.

Climate change could have increased the most intense rainfall over a short period in the worst affected areas by about 50%, according to a study by an international team of climate scientists.

Exclusive: leaked report for government says reducing and predicting risk ‘remains a scientific challenge’

Liz Truss is to lift a ban on fracking despite a leaked government report suggesting little progress has been made in reducing and predicting the risk of earthquakes caused by the practice, the Guardian can reveal.

The first drilling licences in nearly three years are expected to be issued as early as next week, sources said, in a move that will reignite claims of another broken 2019 Conservative manifesto pledge.