The Guardian

In Wycombe, voters have set up Steve Baker Watch to send him a message. His Net Zero Scrutiny Group should heed it too

Steve Baker and the group of MPs and peers who make up the Net Zero Scrutiny Group are risking not only my future but that of my children. That may sound over-dramatic, but it’s what I firmly believe to be true – and it’s why I have set my heart on making Baker either change his climate stance or change his job of MP for Wycombe.

How did I get here? Since I had my children, my climate anxieties have rocketed. I have read enough climate science to know that food shortages, flooded cities and millions dying, especially in the global south, are down the line if we don’t act now. I can’t bear the idea of my children living in that future.

Gemma Rogers is an occupational therapist and a member of Steve Baker Watch

Even previously unaffected countries likely to see uncontrollable blazes, says study, which calls for shift to spending on prevention

Wildfires that have devastated California, Australia and Siberia will become 50% more common by the end of the century, according to a new report that warns of uncontrollable blazes ravaging previously unaffected parts of the planet.

The escalating climate crisis and land-use change are driving a global increase in extreme wildfires, with a 14% increase predicted by 2030 and a 30% increase by 2050, according to a UN report involving more than 50 international researchers.

Campaigners fear trade bond may damage environment abroad and end up weakening regulations in UK

The UK is exporting its pesticide footprint to other countries, environmentalists say. A new report, from the Pesticide Action Network UK, has found that increasing trade with Brazil could fund the use of harmful pesticides that are banned in Britain.

The Brazilian government is currently pushing through a bill that would slash laws to protect human and environmental health from pesticides. Even without this new package of laws, Brazilian farmers are allowed to use almost double the number of hazardous pesticides as those in the UK, including the lethal herbicide Paraquat, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths across the world from acute poisoning, and neonicotinoids, which are toxic to bees.

International Energy Agency reports nearly all the industry’s methane emissions could be avoided at no net cost

Plugging methane from leaky oil and gas facilities would be free of cost almost everywhere in the world, and in many cases would produce a significant profit, at today’s soaring gas prices, the International Energy Agency has found, suggesting that governments have few excuses for not taking action to curb emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas.

Governments have been underreporting their emissions of methane to a dramatic extent, and those emissions are still rising fast, according to the Global Methane Tracker report from the IEA published on Wednesday. Using satellites and other new data, the energy watchdog found emissions were about 70% higher than national governments had suggested, showing the need for far greater monitoring, as well as efforts to staunch leaks.

Time to face the truth: UK aviation, as it exists today, and tackling the climate crisis are incompatible

I was once the only passenger on a four-hour “ghost flight” across Europe. I loved it – the exclusivity, the speed, even the meals. But that was 45 years ago, when flying was quite rare and seemed glamorous. The idea that air travel might one day threaten future generations seemed very far-fetched.

But the facts change. Travel is now a global commodity, and aviation is the world’s fastest growing major source of climate breakdown emissions. Flying empty or near-empty planes around just to hold on to landing slots at airports now seems close to “ecocide” – an act of deliberate destruction of the environment. A staggering 15,000 ghost flights flew from UK airports between March 2020 and September 2021.

John Vidal was the Guardian’s environment editor

Exclusive: Thousands of near-empty planes flown since March 2020, new figures reveal

Almost 15,000 “ghost flights” have departed from the UK, according to newly revealed official figures.

The ghost flights, defined as those with no passengers or less than 10% of passenger capacity, operated from all 32 airports listed in the data. Heathrow was top, with 4,910 ghost flights between March 2020 and September 2021. Manchester and Gatwick were the next highest. There were an average of 760 ghost flights a month over the period, although the data only covered international departure and not domestic flights.

The English countryside is not a blank slate for the whims of city-dwellers — it has a hidden history of politics and power

No one expects to see pastoral scenes at Finsbury Park, north London, when they’ve just emerged from the underground. But there it was last Christmas: a huge billboard depicting the English countryside as one big meadow – a grassy landscape devoid of people, buildings or roads, imprinted with the words “Explore the life that could be …” Advertising Rightmove, the UK’s largest property-listings website, this was an invitation to Covid-weary commuters to opt out of stressful city life and run for the hills.

The pressures of lockdown life and the realities of working from home have been inducing many to move away from cities to smaller towns and villages. By the end of 2020, the words “detached”, “rural” and “secluded” were Zoopla’s fourth, fifth and sixth most common search terms. Estate agents have been reporting this phenomenon throughout the UK since mid 2020, and the same is true across the EU and in North America too. More recently, however, evidence of rural buyers’ remorse has emerged.

Vron Ware is the author of Return of a Native: Learning from the Land

Minette Batters says industry is in crisis because of government failures over staff shortages, Brexit red tape and cheap imports

The government has shown a “total lack of understanding of how food production works”, introduced “completely contradictory policies” on farming, and risks “repeatedly running into crises” through the lack of a post-Brexit plan for UK farming, the leading representative of British farmers will say today.

Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union, will make a scathing attack on ministers’ failures, unprecedented in recent memory in its ferocity from a farming leader.

Survey reveals dramatic difference between state of urban and country populations, with rural numbers continuing to plummet

Britain’s urban hedgehogs are showing signs of recovery, according to a new report, but rural populations have fallen by as much as 75% in some regions in just 20 years.

The charismatic prickly creature, voted the UK’s favourite mammal in 2016, has experienced a dramatic fall in numbers since the turn of the millennium due to loss of habitat, attacks by dogs, vanishing prey and being killed by traffic. However, new analysis of hedgehog surveys has revealed a stark distinction between the fortunes of the town and country hedgehog, with clear signs the urban population has stabilised and may even be on the up.

Animal, which was caught in a trap and had leg amputated, cannot return to wild, but region lacks resources to rehabilitate it

A rare Persian leopard being temporarily held in an Iraqi zoo faces an uncertain future, wildlife specialists fear.

Six weeks ago the male leopard was caught in a trap set by a villager who had recently lost dozens of goats in the mountainous Batifa area of northern Duhok province, in the autonomous Kurdistan region, and had to have its right hind leg amputated.

Members’ links with energy companies prompt fears over church’s plans to end investments in high-carbon firms

Key members of the Church of England’s pensions board have strong links to the fossil fuel industry, new research has shown, amid concerns over the organisation’s plans to end its investments in high-carbon companies.

Analysis by DeSmog, the environmental investigation group, has found three prominent members of the pensions board of the Church Commissioners, the body that looks after Church of England investments, with former or current roles in energy companies, while other major figures have indirect links.

Cuadrilla wants to restart fracking in Lancashire. We won’t stop until this cynical attempt to save a dying industry is halted

We thought fracking in England was over after the government banned it in 2019. So the call by more than 30 Conservative MPs, along with the fracking company Cuadrilla, to reopen exploration in Lancashire is disappointing. It is also desperate: a last-minute attempt to use the recent energy crisis to save a dying industry.

And the people of Lancashire won’t stand for it. Nor will other communities threatened by this damaging industry. Neither the company nor this minority of MPs seem to understand how united people are against fracking. It’s telling that nobody who is publicly backing the letter is from an area directly threatened by fracking. Most are from the south, not the “industrial” north, as it is perceived to be. These MPs and their allies are at best misinformed and at worst delusional.

Artificial intelligence has been identified as one of the top three emerging technologies in conservation, helping protect species around the world

There’s a strand of thinking, from sci-fi films to Stephen Hawking that suggests artificial intelligence (AI) could spell doom for humans. But conservationists are increasingly turning to AI as an innovative tech solution to tackle the biodiversity crisis and mitigate climate change.

A recent report by Wildlabs.net found that AI was one of the top three emerging technologies in conservation. From camera trap and satellite images to audio recordings, the report notes: “AI can learn how to identify which photos out of thousands contain rare species; or pinpoint an animal call out of hours of field recordings – hugely reducing the manual labour required to collect vital conservation data.”

Activists say one in three people in England cannot access green spaces, with the poorest most deprived

Everyone in the UK should be legally entitled to equal access to nature, wildlife campaigners will tell the government.

Communities and NGOS would have the ability to take local authorities to court if they failed to provide healthy green space, under plans set out by more than 60 nature, planning, health and equality organisations. They argue that despite the fact there is strong evidence that accessible, nature-rich spaces boost our physical and mental wellbeing, and reduce mortality, one in three people in England cannot access nature near their home.

New data exposes a strategic failure to drive growth in sectors that can provide the good jobs of the future

In the lead-up to Cop26 in November, Boris Johnson was at his most panglossian as he extolled the economic benefits of the country’s transition to net zero. “The UK’s path to ending our contribution to climate change,” the prime minister forecast, “will be paved with well-paid jobs, billions in investment and thriving green industries … by moving first and taking bold action, we will build a defining competitive edge in electric vehicles, offshore wind, carbon capture technology and more.”

Back in the real world, matters stand rather differently. Far from forging ahead of the rest, Britain risks falling behind in the new industrial revolution, as latest figures from the Office for National Statistics make depressingly clear. The green economy more or less flatlined between 2014 and 2020, the ONS found. Employment in the low-carbon and renewable energy sectors – which include manufacturing, energy supply and construction – actually fell. This dismal state of affairs predated the Covid pandemic and the accompanying recession.

I don’t normally take much interest in planning applications, appeals and disputes, but one that is local to me piqued my curiosity as it involves a burning issue, literally. This is the application by the waste management company Veolia to build an incinerator not too far from Jane Austen’s house at Chawton. Given that it is in an area of breathtaking countryside and despite objections from Alan Titchmarsh, CPRE Hampshire, the South Downs National Park Authority and Historic England, among others, the authorities appear to be giving it the go-ahead.

What particularly caught my eye was the following: “But despite this overwhelming opposition, the report states the proposal will ‘allow residual waste, which cannot be reused or recycled, to be managed at the most reasonable level of the waste hierarchy, diverting it from landfill’.”

Simon Nellist from Cornwall who had moved to Sydney praised as a wonderful human being with a gift for empathy

The family of a British man killed by a shark in Australia have paid tribute to “a wonderful human being” who had a “rare gift” of connecting with people.

Simon Nellist, 35, died in the great white shark attack on Wednesday off Little Bay, east Sydney – the first fatal attack in Sydney for 60 years.

Volunteers are picking leftover produce on farms to reduce waste and help food banks

“It’s like a vegetable treasure hunt,” says Jenni Duncan, 54, ankle deep in mud, looking at the rows of cauliflower plants stretching out in front of her as the Cornish drizzle gets heavier by the minute.

This field near Hayle in west Cornwall has already been harvested, but not all the produce met supermarket standards and so some was left unpicked. This is where Duncan and her team of volunteers come in, working down the rows, peeling back the leaves of plants that have been left behind, hoping to find small but perfectly formed cauliflowers still tucked deep inside.

Greater Manchester mayor says comments made in relation to Marie-France van Heel are ‘frankly disgraceful’

Andy Burnham has hit out at critics of Greater Manchester’s clean air zone (CAZ) whom he says have made “frankly disgraceful” false claims about his wife’s professional links to an electric car charging network.

The Greater Manchester mayor accuses opponents of the CAZ of spreading false information about Marie-France van Heel, a marketing executive who married Burnham in 2000.

A trip from Sydney to Melbourne and back revealed a series of pleasures and pitfalls of Australia’s electrified open roads

Electric vehicles are finally becoming a common sight on Australia’s urban streets, with sales tripling last year.

Until recently, though, limited battery size and a lack of fast charging stations meant out-of-town excursions required careful planning.