The Guardian

A Texas-based group has drawn up a new list of as part of its quest to find species lost to science and possibly extinct

A blind salamander, a tap-dancing spider and a “fat” catfish that has been likened to the Michelin man are among a list of vanished species that one US-based conservation group is aiming to rediscover in the wild and help protect.

The Texas-based group, called Re:wild, has drawn up a new list of the “25 most wanted lost species” as part of its quest to find species lost to science and possibly extinct.

Sri Lankan beaches buried in pellets only ‘tip of the iceberg’ of environmental harm after analysis of nurdles from burning ship

Container ship accidents at sea should be considered the “oil spills of our time”, warned environmental organisations that found a toxic mix of metals, carcinogenic and other harmful chemicals on plastic washed up on Sri Lanka’s beaches after a cargo ship fire.

When the X-Press Pearl sank off nine nautical miles off Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, in May 2021, the most “significant harm” from the country’s worst maritime disaster initially came from the spillage of 1,680 tonnes of plastic pellets, or “nurdles”, into the Indian Ocean. They were found in dead dolphins, fish and on beaches – in some places 2 metres deep. A UN report called it the “single largest plastic spill” in history.

Oxfordshire scientists’ feat raises hopes of using reactions that power sun for low-carbon energy

The prospect of harnessing the power of the stars has moved a step closer to reality after scientists set a new record for the amount of energy released in a sustained fusion reaction.

Researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET), a fusion experiment in Oxfordshire, generated 59 megajoules of heat – equivalent to about 14kg of TNT – during a five-second burst of fusion, more than doubling the previous record of 21.7 megajoules set in 1997 by the same facility.

Local pressure group applies for bathing water status for stretch of Thames through Oxford

The Thames could get its first designated bathing site for wild swimming, the government has announced. This would be the second river designated for swimming in England.

Members of the public have been invited to give their views on the possible designation of Wolvercote Mill Stream at Port Meadow, Oxford, and another bathing site on the Isle of Wight coast.

Analysis: The government’s stance on coalmines, oilfields, transport and green investment is causing increasing worry

• Coalmining licence in south Wales faces court challenge

Green campaigners are increasingly concerned that the push for net zero emissions has been undermined by a series of recent government actions.

Ministers and government bodies are considering extending a coalmine in Wales and a new one in Cumbria, have approved a new oilfield in the North Sea and the expansion of the airport at Bristol, and are making cuts to public transport services.

Energy bills are not increasing because of feeble environmental levies – the solution is a tax on the oil giants

Why are the most extreme Tory MPs so influential? The European Research Group pressed for the hardest of Brexits, and the government gave it what it wanted. A similar faction, the Covid Recovery Group, lobbied for the removal of public health measures, and again succeeded. Now the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, featuring some of the same characters, demands the abandonment of effective climate policy, and is clearly gaining ground.

Why? Because the Conservative party has long been drawn towards its extremes. It is pulled this way by the gravitational force of dirty money. This is a result of the pollution paradox. The paradox proposes that the most antisocial commercial interests have the greatest incentive to buy political favour, otherwise they would be regulated out of existence. So politics comes to be dominated by them.

Using ‘tipping points’ can unlock the changes needed on energy, food and plastics, analysis shows

Tipping points could be identified and triggered to deliver fast action to tackle the climate crisis, according to an analysis led by an academic at Exeter University.

Early subsidies and mass production rapidly crushed costs to leave solar and wind energy as the cheapest power in much of the world and electric cars are now accelerating towards mass adoption, while Greta Thunberg’s solo protest sparked an influential global campaign.

Environment Protection Authority examining fish kill events at Haslams Creek, which flows into Homebush Bay, and at Rydalmere

The deaths of thousands of fish in the Parramatta River triggered by low oxygen levels in the water is being investigated by the New South Wales environmental regulator.

The Environment Protection Authority said it was examining two fish kill events, one last week at Haslams Creek, which flows into Homebush Bay, and the other at Rydalmere on Sunday.

Amid fears about the cost of living crisis, those opposed to government’s climate agenda appear to have sensed an opportunity

• Tories fighting net zero plans are dragging climate into new culture war, experts say

In the run-up to Christmas, as the UK government was frantically attempting to manage the latest wave of Covid infections, the Conservative MP and long-time agitator Steve Baker was apparently touring the tea rooms of parliament trying to persuade colleagues to sign up to his latest cause.

The self-described Brexit hardman, who as the then head of the European Research Group had relentlessly harried Theresa May’s government over Brexit and then become a thorn in Boris Johnson’s side with his anti-lockdown Covid Recovery Group, had a new – and he believed potentially explosive – target: the government’s climate agenda.

As One Ocean event in Brest aims to deliver action in areas from pollution to overfishing, activists warn against ‘bluewashing’

Up to 40 world leaders are due to make “ambitious and concrete commitments” towards combating illegal fishing, decarbonising shipping and reducing plastic pollution at what is billed as the first high-level summit dedicated to the ocean.

One Ocean summit, which opens on Wednesday in the French port of Brest, aims to mobilise “unprecedented international political engagement” for a wide range of pressing maritime issues, said its chief organiser, Olivier Poivre d’Arvor.

We are not who we were very long ago. A lot of new ideas have emerged from Buddhism and other traditions emphasizing compassion, equality, nonviolence and critical perspectives on materialism and capitalism

When news of Thich Nhat Hanh’s death spread around the world, I saw far more people than I’d have expected say how he affected them, through a talk, a book, a retreat, an idea, an example. It was a reminder of the huge impact Buddhism has had in the west as a set of ideas that has flowed far beyond the limits of who belongs to a Buddhist group or has a formal practice. You could think of Buddhism in this context as one tributary of a broad new river of ideas flowing through the west, from which many have drunk without knowing quite where the waters came from.

A Vietnamese monk who founded meditation centers on four continents and published dozens of books, Thich Nhat Hanh was one of the great teachers who came from Asia in the 20th century, along with Zen monks from Japan and Tibetan rinpoches. He stood out because he came to the west as an explicitly political figure, arguing against the war in Vietnam (though the Dalai Lama’s opposition to the Chinese occupation of Tibet is certainly political too). His death seemed to me not an ending but a reminder that something far grander than this great teacher began sometime in the last century and continues to spread.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses

Chevron is accused of polluting the Amazon for 26 years. The only people who’ve paid the price are a human rights lawyer and those whose land was poisoned

Most people have probably heard of Chernobyl, or the BP oil spill. You may also know about my legal battle over contaminated water in California, dramatized in the movie Erin Brockovich. Yet far fewer people have heard about what transpired in the Ecuadorian Amazon – though it’s considered by some activists, journalists, and members of US Congress to be one of the world’s worst environmental disasters.

What if I told you that a multinational oil company allegedly polluted the Amazon for almost three decades? And that the oil company has spent even more years refusing to accept liability? Or that a US attorney who agreed to represent thousands of Ecuadorian villagers in a lawsuit against that oil company has lost his law license, income, spent hundreds of days under house arrest in New York, and in 2021 was sentenced to six months in prison?

Erin Brockovich is an environmental advocate and author of the book Superman’s Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It. She is a Guardian US columnist

Exclusive: Lib Dems analysis shows scrapped zero carbon standard would have saved owners £200 a year

The UK government’s decision to allow homes to be built to low standards of energy efficiency cost owners of newly built homes about £234m last year, analysis shows.

The zero carbon homes standard was supposed to come into force in 2016, but the measure, which was introduced under Labour, was scrapped by the Conservative government in 2015.

WWF report says reduction must be made in the next 10 years to tackle climate crisis and nature loss

British farmers must reduce their production of meat and dairy by a third in the next 10 years if scientific advice on limiting greenhouse gas emissions is to be met, the conservation charity WWF has said.

Even greater cuts may be needed to the UK’s pig herds and poultry flocks, because of the imported feed they eat, and people will need to eat much less meat than they do today, the charity warned. But the result would be lower greenhouse gas emissions, a countryside with more wildlife and flourishing nature, and better health, according to the report.

Exclusive: Cambridge Water admits supply to homes contained above the legal limit and customers never told

Drinking water containing dangerously high levels of toxic chemicals has been pumped into the homes of more than 1,000 people, the Guardian can reveal.

Cambridge Water has admitted it removed a supply containing four times the legal limit of perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS) from the homes of customers in south Cambridgeshire in June last year. But the 1,080 customers living in Stapleford and Great Shelford were never informed that they had been exposed. The company has not revealed for how long the water had been tainted.

Defra report blamed algal blooms but independent research points to chemical released from sediments

An independent study has linked the deaths of thousands of crabs and lobsters and a mystery dog illness to dredging for the government’s flagship freeport on Teesside – a key to the Conservative’s post-Brexit, “levelling-up” agenda.

The report has led local fishers to reject a government theory that an “algal bloom” is responsible for the huge piles of dead crustaceans that began washing up on beaches along England’s north-east coast in October.

Australia has ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ to carve out spot in global automotive supply chain, new report suggests

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Australia could resurrect its car industry in an “environmentally and socially transformative” way by drawing on its rich mineral resources to make electric vehicles, according to a new report.

The plan for a new electric vehicle manufacturing sector is laid out in a report titled Rebuilding Vehicle Manufacturing in Australia, from the Australia Institute’s Carmichael Centre.

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Judge rebukes Marine Management Organisation for prosecution over direct action to stop bottom trawling

The government agency charged with protecting the marine environment has dropped its case against Greenpeace over a protest intended to obstruct destructive fishing practices in UK coastal conservation areas.

The judge in the case rebuked the Marine Management Organisation over the case, saying that the licensing regime, under which the case was brought, “could be better used as a source of protection against those who actively seek to harm the marine environment”.

Exclusive: Activists challenge updated shooting licences, which allow wild birds in England to be shot to protect game birds

The government is facing a legal challenge over its newly updated shooting licences for England, which classify game birds as livestock and so allow wild birds to be shot to protect them.

Campaigners have said the licences give an unfair advantage to gamekeepers, as they allow the birds to be defined as livestock when shooters want to kill other birds to protect them, but are otherwise considered wild birds so the estate owners are not liable for any damage the game birds cause.

Conservationists welcome interim injunction to stop farm development they say threatens migration of 10 million fruit bats

Conservationists in Zambia have hailed a high court injunction preventing deforestation and commercial agriculture on the edge of Kasanka national park, which they say threatens the world’s biggest mammal migration.

Every October, about 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats descend on the swamps of Kasanka from across Africa and beyond. They feast on fruit in and around the park, one of Zambia’s smallest but under the highest level of protection, dispersing seeds across the continent on their epic journey.