The Guardian

Report described as ‘sharp wake-up call’ finds recycling has flatlined since voluntary plan was introduced in 2017

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Australia is failing to meet its own plastic reduction targets, with just 16% of plastic recovered last year despite more than half of packaging found to be easily recyclable, a new report shows.

The latest progress report released by the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (Apco) found plastic recycling has flatlined since a voluntary plan was implemented in 2017.

Burning vegetation and injecting emissions underground ‘ecologically risky’ and ‘should be avoided’

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Experts have questioned how a controversial energy technology that doesn’t currently exist in Australia could be earmarked as a major source of cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in the Morrison government’s plan to reach net zero by 2050.

According to the government’s modelling report of its “technology not taxes” plan, a technique known as BECCS – bioenergy with carbon capture and storage – would be removing about 15% from the nation’s gross greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

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As the Wyangala Dam overflowed and water broke the banks of the Lachlan River, farmers counted their losses as crops were submerged, while closer to the central-west NSW town of Forbes, locals kept a wary eye on rising flood waters. The town has been hit hard in the past and preparations had been in place since September, when the town experienced minor flooding. With more rain forecast in coming days, volunteers continued to work round the clock to protect the town from being inundated

• ‘It’s horrendous’: flooding causes significant crop damage to farms around Forbes

Tiny proportion of world’s land surface hosts carbon-rich forests and peatlands that would not recover before 2050 if lost

Detailed new mapping has pinpointed the carbon-rich forests and peatlands that humanity cannot afford to destroy if climate catastrophe is to be avoided.

The vast forests and peatlands of Russia, Canada and the US are vital, researchers found, as are tropical forests in the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia. Peat bogs in the UK and mangrove swamps and eucalyptus forests in Australia are also on the list.

Exclusive: even wealthy nations seen as having good sustainability records use more than fair share of resources, finds study

No country has managed to meet the basic social needs of its population in the past 30 years without putting undue pressure on the Earth’s supply of natural resources, according to a study.

Looking at a sample of 148 nations, research by the University of Leeds found wealthy countries were putting the future of the planet at risk to make minimal gains in human welfare, while poor countries were living within ecological boundaries but underachieving in areas such as life expectancy and access to energy.

Frantic rescue operation to save livestock from submerged farms underway, with many animals in desperate need of food

• How bad is the Pacific north-west flooding and what caused it?

Thousands of farm animals have died and many more are trapped by floods in desperate need of food and water after the Pacific north-west storm battered a major hub of Canadian agriculture.

Torrential rains pummelled swathes of western Canada’s British Columbia and Washington state in the US in recent days – dumping a month’s worth of rain in two days in some areas – causing floods and mudslides that swallowed stretches of highways and forced the evacuation of thousands of people. One person has been killed and several have been reported missing.

Agency and Ofwat say they have launched inquiry after water companies said there could be unpermitted discharges in rivers

The Environment Agency and the water regulator Ofwat say they have launched a major investigation into sewage treatment after water companies admitted that they could be releasing unpermitted sewage discharges into rivers and watercourses.

More details soon …

If someone has planted a time bomb in your home, you are entitled to dismantle it. The same applies to our planet

The climate struggle has entered a new phase. It is marked by a search for different tactics: something that cannot be so easily ignored, a mode of action that disrupts business-as-usual for real, some way to pull the emergency brake. This search has only just begun, but the signs are there.

In Berlin, half a dozen young climate activists calling themselves ‘The Last Generation’ recently went on a hunger strike, eventually refusing liquids and becoming quite frail before calling the action off. But there are other things than our own bodies that can be shut down. In conjunction with this summer’s Ende Gelände camp against fossil gas, a group calling itself ‘Fridays for sabotage’ claimed responsibility for rupturing a piece of gas infrastructure and urged the movement to embrace this tactic: ‘There are many places of destruction, but just as many places of possible resistance.’ This followed the development of a veritable archipelago of forest occupations in Germany, some of which have damaged equipment for coal extraction.

Andreas Malm is a scholar of human ecology at Lund University

Nations most at risk warn countries such as Australia they will lose out economically if they do not raise targets

Some of the countries most vulnerable to climate breakdown have called on the UN and the UK and other countries who want to lead the climate fight to help them ensure high emitters upgrade their carbon targets, as called for at the Cop26 summit.

They added that countries such as Australia, which has refused to embrace strong carbon-cutting targets, would lose out economically.

Greenpeace says 3,900 tonnes of neonicotinoids were due to leave EU and UK in three months after ban

Thousands of tonnes of pesticides that seriously harm bees are being exported from the EU despite a ban on their outdoor use within the bloc.

Data obtained by Unearthed, the investigative arm of Greenpeace, shows that 3,900 tonnes of banned neonicotinoid pesticides were destined to leave the EU and UK for low- and middle-income nations with weaker environmental regulations in the three months after the ban came into force.

If the world followed Australia on emissions reduction, the planet would heat by about 3C, one expert warns

• Temperature Check is a weekly column examining claims about climate change made by governments, politicians, business and in the media. See the latest column and follow the series here
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The Glasgow climate summit ended early on Sunday morning, but before the clock had struck noon the Morrison government had already said it would be ignoring one of its key outcomes.

More than 190 nations at the summit – including Australia – signed a pact requesting countries “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt next year.

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Guardian reporter Damien Gayle spent two months with the environmental campaigners Insulate Britain as they blocked motorways, glued themselves to road networks, got arrested multiple times and defied injunctions banning them from the highways – infuriating everyone from drivers, to cyclists and presenters on breakfast TV. He finds out what drives them, how they plan for key actions, and asks what's next after nine activists are jailed for blocking the M25  

• Nine Insulate Britain activists jailed for breach of road blockades injunction

Judge imposes sentences ranging up to six months, saying some of them ‘seem to want to be martyrs’

Nine Insulate Britain protesters have been jailed for breaking a court order banning them from protesting on the M25, by a judge who said no lesser penalty “would adequately mark the gravity of the defendants’ conduct”.

Ana Heyatawin, 58, and Louis McKechnie, 21, were jailed for three months while Dr Ben Buse, 36, Roman Paluch-Machnik, 28, Oliver Rock, 41, Emma Smart, 44, Tim Speers, 36, and James Thomas, 47, each received four-month sentences.

Raft of commodities would be prohibited under draft law in fight to protect world’s endangered forests

Beef, palm oil, cocoa and other products linked to deforestation will be banned from entering the European Union under landmark legal proposals that attempt to help prevent the felling of the world’s great forests.

Two weeks after world leaders signed a plan at Cop26 to reverse deforestation at Cop26, the EU executive on Wednesday outlined a draft law requiring companies to prove that agricultural commodities destined for the bloc’s 450 million consumers were not linked to deforestation.

Israeli firm says dairy proteins will be made by microorganisms programmed with DNA instructions

“Cow’s milk without cows” will be in Israeli shops by 2023, after a start-up raised a record $13m (£9.7m) in seed funding from investors to help it make traditional dairy products from microorganisms.

The Tel Aviv-based Imagindairy, which announced its seed funding result on Wednesday, said the milk it produced would be identical to cow’s milk, but the cow, and her associated methane, would be replaced by fungi or other plant microorganisms programmed to produce milk proteins.

Multiple fatalities confirmed after torrential rains forced thousands in British Columbia to evacuate

• Fatalities from floods and landslides after Pacific north-west storm

Ben Taylor, 27, was one of nine members of group accused of breaching injunction over M25

An Insulate Britain activist has told the high court he will “block the highway at the earliest opportunity” if he is not jailed for breaching an order banning the group from protesting on the M25.

Ben Taylor, 27, was one of nine members of the climate activist group to appear at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Tuesday accused of breaching the injunction, granted to National Highways, by blocking a roundabout on London’s orbital motorway.

Around 256,000 Americans live in areas where incidences of cancer caused by air pollution exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s current upper limit of ‘acceptable risk’

How do you calculate the price of a human life? What about 256,000 human lives?

Around a quarter of a million Americans are living in parts of the United States where rates of cancer caused by air pollution exceed the US government’s own limit of “acceptable risk.” Environmental experts have a chilling name for these sites:

Adrienne Matei is a freelance journalist

Steve and Dee Allen say sponsorship deal and ‘gagging clause’ show it is no longer a credible scientific institution

Two prominent scientists are refusing to allow their work to be included in the Science Museum’s collection because of the institution’s links to Shell.

Steve and Dee Allen, who have carried out some of the most important research into global plastic pollution, say the museum’s sponsorship deal with the fossil fuel company – and a subsequent “gagging clause” – meant it was no longer a credible scientific institution.

Former US vice president says Australia’s 2050 net zero target ‘has very little meaning’ without nearer term goal

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The former US vice president Al Gore has criticised the Morrison government for failing to increase the ambition of Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target and warned coal workers to be deeply sceptical about “hollow words” from politicians.

Gore told a virtual conference organised by Engineers Australia on Tuesday he was glad Scott Morrison took a pledge to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 to the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, given the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent assessment of the climate crisis deemed the problem a “code red for humanity”.