The Guardian

Urgent questions from the climate crisis to tax avoidance remain on the table

It is January 2020. Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg are the star turns at the annual festival of globalisation organised by the World Economic Forum in Davos. The fossil-fuel loving president and the teenage environmentalist have a pop at each other. There are reports of a new virus emerging from China but Covid barely gets a mention.

Much has happened since. For a second year running, Davos is not going ahead in person. US billionaires will not be parking their private jets at Zurich airport. The skies above the ski resort made famous by Thomas Mann in the Magic Mountain will not be thick with helicopters. Hotels will not be able to charge five times their normal rates for a captive audience of policy makers, business leaders, academics, campaigners, journalists and assorted hangers-on.

The spill in the Timor Sea was one of Australia’s worst environmental disasters, with thousands of seaweed farmers claiming it destroyed their livelihoods

The oil came without warning.

One morning in September 2009 it was there, coating Daniel Sanda’s modest seaweed farm on the Indonesian island of Rote: a dark sheen across the water, waxy yellow-grey blocks floating in the sea.

Conservation groups appeal to EU to take action against slaughter they allege flouts rules

Finland is joining Sweden and Norway in culling wolves this winter to control their population, as conservation groups appeal to the European Union to take action against the slaughter.

Hunters in Sweden have already shot dead most of their annual target of 27 wolves, while Finland is to authorise the killing of 20 wolves in its first “population management cull” for seven years.

Exclusive: Studies show high temperatures and air pollution during pregnancy can cause lifelong health effects

The climate crisis is damaging the health of foetuses, babies and infants across the world, six new studies have found.

Scientists discovered increased heat was linked to fast weight gain in babies, which increases the risk of obesity in later life. Higher temperatures were also linked to premature birth, which can have lifelong health effects, and to increased hospital admissions of young children.

This weekend is the last chance to donate to our 2021 appeal supporting those on the frontline of the climate emergency

• Guardian and Observer charity appeal 2021: the fight for climate justice
• Donate to our charity appeal here

In this year’s Guardian and Observer charity appeal we have supported communities and individuals hit hardest by the climate emergency, people who have seen their lives upended and livelihoods lost by extreme weather. It’s a topical issue, and not going away – and there is still time to donate: so far we have raised over £800,000.

Our appeal is shaped by vivid stories of climate emergency: floods, drought and wildfires; from reindeer killed by unnatural arctic heat to chronic crop failure by the shores of Lake Victoria. At its heart, however, lies inequality and poverty: the stark truth is the countries least responsible for global emissions have by far suffered worst from climate-induced disasters.

Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay are reeling from a historic heatwave with temperatures as high as 113F

Cities and towns across southern South America have been setting record high temperatures as the region swelters during a historic heatwave.

“Practically all of Argentina and also neighboring countries such as Uruguay, southern Brazil and Paraguay are experiencing the hottest days in history,” said Cindy Fernández, meteorologist at the official National Meteorological Service.

Miami-Dade police department has shared body cam footage of one of their officers rescuing a juvenile dolphin that was tangled in a fishing net off the coast of Miami, Florida. The footage shows how officer Nelson Silva used a knife to cut the net and free the animal. The rescue took place on 10 December

• Companies race to stem flood of microplastic fibres into the oceans
  
• Plastic beads could make nets more visible to cetaceans, scientists say
  

Dare we speak of the other crisis the government is failing us on?

Advise people not to drive or light wood burners rather than imposing restrictions on vulnerable, campaigners say

Campaigners have called on the government to urge people not to drive or light wood-burning stoves during toxic air peaks rather than telling the vulnerable not to exercise or go outside.

London suffered its worst air pollution since 2018 on Friday, when experts predicted it would reach “band 10”, the highest level on the scale.

David Attenborough’s new series takes aim at plant blindness, providing a vital service in the fight against global warming

The term “plant blindness” was coined in 1998 to describe our general tendency, as humans, not to see the plant life that surrounds us. The problem has understandable roots: the human brain evolved to detect difference, and then to categorise that difference as either threat or non-threat. Plants, being unlikely to attack, are lumped together and treated as background, a green screen against which dramas take place. Many plants, and especially trees, exist on a different timescale to humans – who, moreover, have spent millennia dividing existence into conscious beings and things, where the former are afforded automatic importance over the latter. Combined with the general move to cities, and then to screen-based life indoors, this has resulted in, for example, up to half of British children being unable to identify stinging nettles, brambles or bluebells; 82% of those questioned could not recognise an oak leaf.

We become more emotionally involved in what we can comprehend. Plants, as David Attenborough reminds us in his new BBC series, The Green Planet, “are the basis of all life, including ourselves”. And yet the beauty and power – and scope for anthropomorphism – of the polar bear, the snow leopard, the orangutan mean many more will campaign to save them than, say, crested cow-wheat.

British Sugar has applied for ban exemption despite chemicals damaging bees’ ability to forage and navigate

The government has ignored the advice of its scientific advisers to allow sugar beet farmers to deploy a banned bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticide in 2022.

British Sugar has successfully applied for an exemption to permit the banned pesticide, known as Cruiser SB, to be used in England this year because of the threat to sugar beet posed by a virus transmitted by aphids.

Jury decision over 2019 action is the latest acquittal involving a high-profile protest

Three activists who targeted London’s public transport network to raise the alarm about the escalating climate crisis have been acquitted by a jury.

The three Extinction Rebellion campaigners disrupted rush hour services for more than an hour in east London in 2019, with two of them climbing on top of the train and a third gluing himself to one of the carriages.

Third Energy now has ‘absolutely no interest in fossil gas’ and is targeting renewable energy

A high-profile UK fracking company has been taken over by a green energy group and now has an anti-fracking campaigner as a director.

Yorkshire-based Third Energy was at the forefront of efforts to produce fossil gas and intended to use high-pressure fluids to fracture shale rocks under the county. But it was hampered by permit delays and fierce local opposition.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including wild goats, a new baby gorilla and a very rare octopus

Cargill, which had pledged to clean up its supply chain, sells feed for many of the billion chickens killed annually in UK

A major supplier of animal feed is still buying soya and corn from a farm linked to deforestation in the Amazon, despite having pledged to clean up its global supply chains.

Cargill, a giant agricultural multinational that sells feed to British chicken farms, buys crops from a farm growing soybeans on deforested land in the Brazilian Amazon.

Campaign by local angling club to free fishes’ migratory routes is part of move across Europe to create free-flowing rivers

A dam that has blocked the Tromsa River in Norway for more than 100 years was blown up with dynamite this week, freeing migratory routes for fish.

“It’s a big step,” said Tore Solbakken of Norwegian angling club Gudbrandsdal Sportsfiskeforening, who has campaigned for five years to have the old hydropower plant dam removed. “I’m very happy. It’s all about restoring healthy rivers and fish populations.”

Workers at nearly 80 grocery stores accuse corporation of making big profits during pandemic while not paying employees enough

Over 8,000 workers at nearly 80 Kroger-owned King Soopers grocery stores around Colorado started a three week strike on Wednesday as new union contract negotiations stalled.

The dispute is the latest in which workers have accused a corporation of making big profits during the pandemic while not paying high enough wages.

Heating and habitat loss drive birds and mammals to cooler areas where plants can not follow, study shows

The decline of seed-dispersing animals is damaging plants’ ability to adapt to climate breakdown, a study has found.

Almost half of all plant species depend on animals to spread their seeds, but scientists fear these plants may be at risk of extinction when animals are driven to migrate to cooler areas, as plants cannot easily follow.

• Last year was sixth hottest ever recorded, scientists find
• US experts say 1.8bn people experienced record hot year

Nearly a quarter of the world’s population experienced a record hot year in 2021, as the climate crisis continues to unleash escalating temperatures around the globe, according to new data from leading US climate scientists.

Last year was the sixth hottest ever recorded, with the global temperature 1.1C above the pre-industrial average, a new annual analysis from Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) found.

Because the global south is bearing the brunt of climate breakdown, it’s people of colour who are suffering most

It’s 4am, and sparks from the circular saw are flying by my head. I have been given goggles to protect my eyes from the debris and although I’ve been told that I’m in safe hands, I do not feel safe at all. I’m cold from sitting on the road for five hours; my back is stiff, my hands are numb and, to top it all off, humanity is on the edge of extinction. This probably seems an odd way to spend my time to some of you, but this is how climate activists who engage in direct action try to be heard. We have tried everything else. We are exhausted and terrified. So we keep doing it.

Last year I was included in an article about climate activists. In the original article, I was the only person pictured without my placard. My placard said: “Climate inaction = racism.” I want to talk about what this means.

Elise Yarde is a climate justice activist from London