The Guardian

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

• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

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.

Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

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

• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

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.

Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

Retired engineer’s efforts propel Stithians towards multimillion-pound project to link homes to underground low-carbon system

The environmental evangelising of a retired mechanical engineer, Brian Piper, is bringing a renewable energy revolution to the streets of a small Cornish village.

Until now, Stithians, which sits halfway between Redruth and Falmouth, was best known for its annual show, said to be the largest agricultural spectacle in Cornwall. But Piper is determined that in future the village will become known for its role in tackling climate change.

Proposals – the first in 30 years to tackle catastrophic wildlife loss in Europe – include legally binding targets for land, rivers and sea

For the first time in 30 years, legislation has been put forward to address catastrophic wildlife loss in the EU. Legally binding targets for all member states to restore wildlife on land, rivers and the sea were announced today, alongside a crackdown on chemical pesticides.

In a boost for UN negotiations on halting and reversing biodiversity loss, targets released by the European Commission include reversing the decline of pollinator populations and restoring 20% of land and sea by 2030, with all ecosystems to be under restoration by 2050. The commission also proposed a target to cut the use of chemical pesticides in half by 2030 and eradicate their use near schools, hospitals and playgrounds.

Brewer says wood- and plant-based design retains same ‘taste and fizziness’ as glass bottles

Carlsberg is to conduct its biggest trial of recyclable fibre beer bottles across Europe.

The bottles are made of a wood-based fibre shell and a plant-based polyethylene furanoate (PEF) polymer lining.

Tiny self-propelled robo-fish can swim around, latch on to free-floating microplastics and fix itself if it gets damaged

Scientists have designed a tiny robot-fish that is programmed to remove microplastics from seas and oceans by swimming around and adsorbing them on its soft, flexible, self-healing body.

Microplastics are the billions of tiny plastic particles which fragment from the bigger plastic things used every day such as water bottles, car tyres and synthetic T-shirts. They are one of the 21st century’s biggest environmental problems because once they are dispersed into the environment through the breakdown of larger plastics they are very hard to get rid of, making their way into drinking water, produce, and food, harming the environment and animal and human health.

Drastic die-back of milk parsley on Norfolk Broads threatens future of swallowtail

Britain’s largest butterfly may be at risk from fungal pathogens that have caused a drastic die-back of the rare plant on which its caterpillars feed.

The swallowtail is only found breeding at 16 sites in Britain, all on the Norfolk Broads where milk parsley grows.

At least 60 people have been killed and millions need help after floodwater submerged 80% of Sylhet district in what aid agencies say is the worst monsoon in 20 years

The national electricity market is a failed 1990s experiment. A new government-owned body should take control of the power system

A crisis, as the saying has it, combines danger and opportunity. The dangers of the current electricity crisis are obvious. The opportunity it presents is to end to the failed experiment of the national electricity market.

Having suspended the market last week, the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) is now directing generators when to supply electricity. It’s also paying them lavish compensation for the financial shortfalls they suffer as a result.

Analysis finds 58% of rapeseed oil in Europe is burned for fuel despite soaring prices and climate impact

Europe and the UK are pouring 17,000 tons – or about 19 million bottles – of cooking oil into vehicle fuel tanks every day, even though it is up to two-and-a-half times more expensive than before 2021, according to new analysis.

The equivalent of another 14 million bottles a day of palm and soy oil – mostly from Indonesia and South America – is also burned for fuel, the research says.

Former ADF chief backs study saying threats ‘continue to escalate in the absence of far stronger climate action than we have seen thus far’

• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

Anthony Albanese will ask Australia’s most senior intelligence chief, Andrew Shearer, to personally lead a review of the security threats posed by the climate crisis.

The move has been backed by a former Australian defence force chief, retired Admiral Chris Barrie, who warned the government to plan for climate risks including disruptions to trade, more severe drought, and increasing demands on emergency services and the military.

Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

Australian Conservation Foundation says global heating from fossil fuel development will compound coral bleaching on Great Barrier Reef

• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

An environment group has launched a legal bid to halt a $16bn gas development in Western Australia, arguing the effect of its greenhouse gas emissions on the Great Barrier Reef will be significant and should be assessed under national environment law.

Documents lodged by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) in the federal court on Tuesday said Woodside’s Scarborough gas project would likely affect the 2,300km reef system’s world and natural heritage values by adding to mass coral bleaching.

Environment groups welcome long-awaited deal to curb harmful subsidies but say key measures to curb overfishing were dropped

After 20 years of failed negotiations, the World Trade Organization has secured a deal to curb harmful subsidies that contribute to overfishing. Conservationists and campaign groups welcomed last week’s agreement as historic, despite criticism of “big holes” in the agreement.

The deal was the first concluded in Geneva for all 164 member states of the WTO with “environmental sustainability” at its core, the organisation’s director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said in her closing speech.

Gas stations are environmental liabilities and hugely expensive to remediate. Electric cars are making gas stations obsolete

Whether or not we’ve all realized it, the era of gasoline-powered cars is rapidly winding to a close – and with it, gas stations and the pollution they bring to communities.

People are tired of being forced to pay obscene amounts of money for fuel every time there’s an international incident. Meanwhile, the cost of battery tech is just 10% of what it was a decade ago, and is expected to continue dropping as the decade wears on. And just this month the Biden administration announced its plan for making EV charging stations accessible across the US.

Nathan Taft is the digital and communications lead for Stand.earth’s Safe Cities initiative

Faroese firm Bakkafrost claims direct flights to US will cut carbon but critics say air transport is not the answer

A salmon farming company has bought a Boeing 757 in a race to get its fresh fish on to the plates of diners in Manhattan in less than 24 hours.

The Faroese firm Bakkafrost, which also owns the Scottish Salmon Company, argues it can cut its carbon footprint by flying its own jet across the Atlantic and minimise waste by getting its fish to its US customers faster.

Experts warn ambitious targets for nature must be agreed at UN meeting, moved from China to Canada after two-year wait

The date for a key UN nature summit has finally been confirmed after more than two years of delays and amid fears momentum to halt biodiversity loss across the globe has been lost.

Ahead of the latest round of negotiations in Nairobi this week, the UN convention on biological diversity confirmed that the Cop15 biodiversity conference will now take place in Montreal, Canada, from 5 to 17 December, after it became clear China would not be able to host the event in Kunming due to the country’s zero-Covid policy.