The Guardian

Researchers say the island’s biggest mine is on track to achieve no net loss of forest but that ‘there remain important caveats’

Ambatovy mine on the east coast of Madagascar is an environmental conundrum fit for the 21st century. Beginning operations in 2012, the multibillion-dollar open-pit nickel and cobalt mine is the largest investment in the history of the country, one of the poorest on Earth. About 9,000 Malagasies are employed by the project, owned by the Japanese company Sumitomo Corporation and Korean firm Komir, which mines minerals destined for the world’s electric car batteries. To construct the mine and the 140-mile (220km) slurry pipeline to port on the Indian ocean, 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of pristine rainforest was cleared, destroying vital habitat of the endangered indri, the largest living lemur, and thousands of other species.

Alongside the land clearing in a country that has lost nearly a quarter of its tree cover since 2000, the mine has been blamed for air and water pollution, as well as health problems in the local population. The smell of ammonia in residential areas and the pollution of drinking water were revealed in a 2017 investigation.

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Subsidies to prop up fossil fuel are more pressing for the Morrison government than subsidies for renewables or climate adaptation

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The idea that the Coalition can borrow money to build car parks in marginal seats but must “save up” money to build up an emergency relief fund is absurd. It’s not based on any sound principle of economics, finance or even politics. It’s purely driven by the prime minister’s need for a regular flow of “announceables”.

While the prime minister is in Lismore on Wednesday to declare a national emergency and announce flood funding, Australians – and in particular disaster-stricken communities – are growing tired of his “announce early, announce often” modus operandi.

The World Nature Photography awards winners of 2021 have been announced, with entries coming in from 20 countries across six continents. The overall winning photographer, Amos Nachoum, waited for hours on the remote Antartic island of Plano for the moment at low tide when seals stealthily enter a lagoon. Here he captures the moment that one prepares to devour a defenceless penguin

• The week in wildlife – in pictures

Negotiators must target production as well as consumption, if they want to bring the harm caused by single-use items under control

There is no data on global plastic pollution that is equivalent to the regular measurements of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. But as with greenhouse gases, the recent news has been nearly all bad. In 1950, worldwide production of plastics stood at 2m tons per year. In 2020, it was 367m tons (down from 368m the year before due to the coronavirus pandemic). An increase this enormous is hard to visualise. But the 8.8m tons of plastic waste that is estimated to enter the world’s marine environment each year is the equivalent of a rubbish truck filled with plastic being tipped into the sea every minute.

So the agreement struck by 173 countries at the UN environment assembly in Nairobi last week was a huge relief. At last, something is going to be done multilaterally about a problem that no government can solve on its own. Without the legally binding treaty that will be negotiated over the next two years, it was hard to see where progress would come from.

Michael Gove welcomes launch of commission to explore scheme that could meet 7% of UK’s power needs

A major infrastructure project harnessing the vast tidal power of the Severn estuary is back on the agenda after the UK government said the Russian invasion of Ukraine had highlighted the need to find more secure sources of energy.

An independent commission was launched on Tuesday to explore using the Severn estuary, which has the second largest tidal range in the world, to create energy.

EPA to approve plan for four types of neonicotinoid chemical to be used on US farmland – despite being banned in Europe

The US Environmental Protection Agency is poised to allow the use of four of the most devastating chemicals to bees, butterflies and other insects to continue in America for the next 15 years, despite moves by the European Union to ban the use of toxins that have been blamed for widespread insect declines.

The EPA is widely expected to confirm a proposed plan outlined last year that will extend the use of imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin and dinotefuran on US farmland for the next 15 years, even though the agency has noted “ecological risks of concern, particularly to pollinators and aquatic invertebrates”.

Creatures seen using discarded items for shelter or to lay eggs, highlighing ‘extreme ability to adapt’

Whether it’s mimicking venomous creatures, or shooting jets of water at aquarium light switches to turn them off, octopuses are nothing if not resourceful. Now, an analysis of underwater images suggests octopuses are increasingly using discarded bottles, cans, and other human rubbish as shelter or as a sanctuary for their eggs.

The study – the first to systematically evaluate and characterise litter use by octopuses using crowdsourced images – analysed hundreds of underwater photos posted on social media platforms and image databases, or collected by marine biologists and diving interest groups.

Exclusive: Toxic air pollution kills thousands of people in city every year but higher fines not being levied

Just one in every 1,000 drivers reported for unnecessary idling of their engines were fined in central London, data has revealed.

Toxic air pollution kills about 4,000 people every year in the capital and councils have targeted parked drivers who do not turn off their vehicles.

Use of heat, steam and suffocating foam to slaughter sick animals is condemned as bird flu epidemic threatens poultry stocks

Vets and animal advocates in the US are calling for restrictions on “cruel” methods of culling birds, as farmers face killing millions of poultry due to a highly virulent avian flu tearing through the country.

In 2020, millions of farm animals were killed across the US after the Covid-19 pandemic shut down slaughterhouses and left animals stranded on farms. Now, bird flu, which has already led to the slaughter of millions of birds in Europe, is likely to result in another mass depopulation.

More than 50 million chickens and turkeys were killed after an aggressive bird flu outbreak in the US in 2015.

However, two commonly used methods to cull animals on-farm are attracting increasing backlash. The use of firefighting foam to suffocate animals and ventilation shutdown, in which animals are killed with extremely high heat and steam, are still permitted in the US, despite being effectively banned in the EU and labelled “inhumane”.

Poultry flocks sickened with avian flu are commonly killed with carbon dioxide poisoning or firefighting foam, where birds are smothered with a blanket of foam.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) says the method involves “drowning in fluids or suffocation by occlusion of the airways” and is “not accepted as a humane method for killing animals”.

It is also not listed as a method of killing animals for disease control by the main animal health body, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Tens of thousands of Sydney residents have been forced from their homes as deadly floods unleashed chaos across Australia’s largest city

The weather system that caused flooding in Queensland and northern NSW has now reached Sydney, with flooding affecting the northern beaches. Manly Dam began spilling, potentially impacting some 2,000 people and 800 homes. Residents in low-lying areas were urged to evacuate. Some 40,000 people across the state were subject to evacuation orders. Dean Narramore from the Bureau of Meterology says, 'A tough 24 hours or even 48 hours ahead and even if the rain does stop on Wednesday and Thursday ... there's still a lot of water in these rivers'

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• Sydney residents evacuated from homes overnight as heavy rain brings fresh flood risks
• Australia news live update: Sydney floods wreak havoc; Manly dam begins to spill as NSW flood waters rise
• Peter Dutton says Australians should look at ‘positives’ of flood response as Dominic Perrottet apologises
  

If the UK is going to need gas well into the 2030s, it would surely be better to get it close to home

The first lesson of the gas crisis is old and boring: the UK should get serious about insulating its leaky properties. If all homes that have energy performance certificate band D were upgraded to band C, the UK’s total gas demand would fall by 7%, and imports by 15%, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit calculates. Given the UK’s wretched record in insulation versus European peers, that sounds a small but easy win.

The second part – the supply side – is where the trickier stuff starts. The broad energy direction has been set towards nuclear and renewables, but there’s no getting away from the fact that gas will be in the mix for a long time yet. Virtually all transition scenarios imagine it, and you have to be an extreme optimist to believe UK consumers can quickly be converted to the joys of heat pumps.

PM insists move will not undermine push for net zero; critics say it would have little effect on consumer bills

Boris Johnson has said the UK may have to increase domestic gas and oil production as a response to the need to wean the world off Russian resources, despite the opposition of climate campaigners and some scepticism in the cabinet.

The prime minister said the UK was looking at increasing North Sea output, although critics say it would take two decades to ramp up and would have little immediate effect on the impending rise in domestic energy bills.

Sydney man who ate ‘thumbnail-sized’ piece of toadstool on his lawn says he ‘never felt that sick in my life’

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Wet weather along the east coast of Australia has led to an early bumper mushroom season, prompting warnings about the risks of poisoning.

Toadstools have grown abundantly in urban parks and back yards in New South Wales in recent weeks, driven by the wettest summer in three decades in parts of the state.

Degeneration of soils, genetically modified and patented seeds, and the threat of severe droughts as well as floods, are all affecting food security

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In the northern New South Wales town of Kyogle last week, locals as well as residents of Nimbin and Lismore descended on the IGA supermarket – if they had petrol – in the hope of buying a bagload of groceries.

By lunchtime, many of the shelves containing fresh fruit and vegetables, and even the freezer aisles, were empty.

Campaigners say community energy groups can help reduce country’s dependence on Russian fossil fuel

The UK should “mobilise an army of volunteers” to transform the country’s energy landscape and reduce its dependence on Russian fossil fuel by setting up community energy groups, say campaigners.

With energy prices rising, local schemes such as solar panels, locally-funded wind farms and even hydroelectric dams could be crucial to helping generate energy.

Analysis of satellite observations show forest is losing stability with ‘profound’ global implications

The Amazon is approaching a tipping point, data shows, after which the rainforest would be lost with “profound” implications for the global climate and biodiversity.

Computer models have previously indicated a mass dieback of the Amazon is possible but the new analysis is based on real-world satellite observations over the past three decades.

For the first time, a IPCC report has acknowledged the role of misinformation. But it still doesn’t name the culprits

People who do not spend their days reading climate reports or scouring the archives of oil companies are often surprised to hear that the fossil-fuel industry has been part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since its inception. And it’s not just the IPCC. Oil companies have been involved in the entire international effort on climate change since it began in the late 1980s – and here’s a pro tip: they’re there for a reason, and it’s not decarbonisation.

The second part of the IPCC’s most recent report was published last week, and it finally acknowledged the oil industry’s biggest contribution to the climate space thus far: misinformation. This was followed closely by another new-to-the-IPCC topic: maladaptation, which refers to measures ostensibly geared towards warding off climate change, but which “may lead to increased risk of adverse climate-related outcomes, including via increased greenhouse gas emissions, increased or shifted vulnerability to climate change, more inequitable outcomes, or diminished welfare”, according to the IPCC.

Research shows that governments and individuals making small changes can have a huge impact in reducing emissions

• Six promises you can make to help reduce carbon emissions

People in well-off countries can help avert climate breakdown by making six relatively straightforward lifestyle changes, according to research from three leading institutions.

The study found that sticking to six specific commitments – from flying no more than once every three years to only buying three new items of clothing a year – could rein in the runaway consumption that is partially driving the climate crisis.