The Guardian

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including galloping horses, a honey-bee hive and a lonely red-crowned crane

Exclusive: Releasing nutrients can spur phytoplankton growth, absorbing carbon dioxide in the process

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Scientists and engineers have pumped 300 litres of simulated whale poo into the ocean off Sydney as part of efforts to snag a share of Elon Musk’s US$100m prize for capturing and storing carbon.

The team, known as WhaleX, carried out its first open-ocean experiment on Sunday about eight kilometres off Port Botany in New South Wales after gaining clearance from the federal government.

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The Guardian and Observer’s 2021 charity appeal is fighting for climate justice. In this video, we meet some of those on the climate frontline, and the charities helping them. This year we are supporting four charities - Global Greengrants Fund UK, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Environmental Justice Foundation, and Practical Action - that fight to protect the rights and livelihoods of communities hit by extreme weather events caused by the climate emergency.

• Donate to our charity appeal here

Revellers in England and Ireland mark the shortest day of the year and official first day of winter

2021 was another extraordinary period for news and investigations, in the Guardian's 200th anniversary year. Twelve months of Covid stories ranged from the hope of vaccination through to government mismanagement. It was also the year of Cop26, with world leaders and activists gathering in an attempt to slow the climate crisis. 

There were protests against injustice, including those about violence against women in the UK. It was also a year of global political shifts, not least in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, it was a year of sporting inspiration in Euro 2020, the Olympics, and Emma Raducanu's improbable US Open victory. 

Here are some of the highlights of our journalism over that time.

• Show your support in our 200th year for the Guardian’s powerful, open, independent journalism in 2021 and the years ahead

Plan B Earth group argued ministers had not taken ‘practical and effective’ steps to reduce emissions

An environmental campaign group that challenged the lawfulness of the UK government’s climate policies has lost a high court fight.

Plan B Earth argued that ministers had not taken “practical and effective” steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It wanted Mr Justice Bourne to give activists the go-ahead for a judicial review but he refused to grant permission.

The rest of the world needs to start treating the US as what it is: a dangerous country that needs to be reined in

As the now very likely collapse of the Build Back Better Act underlines, what’s exceptional about the United States is its extraordinary ability to dole out harm. Besides its ever-ballooning military budget and foreign wars, America also makes the world unsafe thanks to the prodigious amount of fossil fuel it continues to send around the world.

Oil Change International, Earthworks and the Center for International Environmental Law have found that burning the oil and gas expected to be drilled in the US alone over the next decade could gobble up 10% of the entire world’s remaining carbon budget, the amount of carbon dioxide that can be released before the planet warms above 1.5C.

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at The New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back

It’s nearly inevitable that we will face another pandemic. If we don’t plan to counter it, tomorrow will be like today, except much, much worse

For decades, scientists warned that urban encroachment on pristine habitats would unleash dangerous new viruses.

Covid-19 should not have been a surprise – and, since viruses always mutate, neither should Omicron have been.

Tim Crosland was found in contempt for prematurely revealing court’s decision on third runway

A lawyer and climate campaigner who leaked the result of a supreme court ruling on the Heathrow airport expansion has lost an appeal against a contempt of court finding.

Tim Crosland, the director of environmental campaign group Plan B Earth, was found in contempt of court for prematurely revealing the court’s decision on Heathrow’s third runway 22 hours before it was made public in December 2020.

Florida Power & Light delivered bill text to a state lawmaker. Its parent company sent $10,000 to her campaign coffers

The biggest power company in the US is pushing policy changes that would hamstring rooftop solar power in Florida, delivering legislation for a state lawmaker to introduce, according to records obtained by the Miami Herald and Floodlight.

Florida Power & Light (FPL), whose work with dark money political committees helped secure Republican control of the state Senate, is lobbying to hollow out net metering, a policy that lets Florida homeowners and businesses offset the costs of installing solar panels by selling power back to the company.

Florida Power & Light delivered bill text to a state lawmaker. Its parent company sent $10,000 to her campaign coffers

The biggest power company in the US is pushing policy changes that would hamstring rooftop solar power in Florida, delivering legislation for a state lawmaker to introduce, according to records obtained by the Miami Herald and Floodlight.

Florida Power & Light (FPL), whose work with dark money political committees helped secure Republican control of the state Senate, is lobbying to hollow out net metering, a policy that lets Florida homeowners and businesses offset the costs of installing solar panels by selling power back to the company.

Critics say ‘polluting’ plant in the Hunter region – which will only operate 2% of the year – makes little commercial sense

The NSW government has approved the construction of a $600m gas-fired power station backed by the Morrison government in the state’s Hunter region.

Snowy Hydro’s application to build the 660-megawatt power station in Kurri Kurri was approved by Rob Stokes in one of his final decisions as the state’s planning minister before Anthony Roberts takes over the portfolio.

Looking back on a year in which the Age of Extinction reported on everything from summits to species loss, solutions and community involvement

• Read more in our series Biodiversity: what happened next?

Bats sweltering in their boxes, polar bears and narwhals using up to four times as much energy to survive, birds starving as Turkey’s lakes dry up, and unique island species at high risk of extinction as the planet warms. If there was ever any doubt about the inextricable link between the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis, those doubts were well and truly dispelled in 2021.

“The science is clear: climate, biodiversity and human health are fully interdependent,” Frans Timmermans, the European Commission vice-president who heads the European Green Deal; Achim Steiner, of the UN Development Programme; and Sandrine Dixson-Declève, of the Club of Rome, wrote before the Cop26 climate conference.

Development would have to fit within the mining giant’s pledge to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050

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Mining giant Glencore has defended its plans to dig a $1.5bn coalmine in Queensland after telling the federal government more than a dozen threatened species could be on the site.

Environmentalists said the Valeria mine would destroy habitat for threatened species and threaten farmland, and put a question mark over the company’s climate goals.

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Mass tourism had brought the archipelago to the brink of ecological catastrophe. Now Thailand hopes to make it the standard bearer for a sustainable tourism model as the country reopens to visitors after the Covid shutdown

An Australian brush turkey was filmed protecting its nesting mound from a diamond python, comfortably sending the snake running.

Brush turkey fathers protect their eggs, but once hatched the birds are left to fend for themselves with no parental care. The Australian native birds are common in parts of Queensland and New South Wales, and can make the nesting mounds close to urban areas.

Credit: Twitter| @kcarruthers

A celebratory Australian seafood spread doesn’t have to sacrifice sustainability – here conservation scientist Carissa Klein gives a few tips to make better choices

Summer in Australia is synonymous with seafood, from fish and chips at the beach to prawns on the barbie. But how do we know if the seafood is sustainable – that is, harvested from healthy stocks with minimal negative environmental impacts?

More than a third of the world’s fisheries are being harvested at unsustainable levels, according to the latest figures from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Eat farmed Australian prawns. Much intensive prawn farming overseas has been linked to the destruction of coastal habitats, and some Australian wild-caught prawns have bycatch issues, meaning rare species like dugongs and turtles are accidentally caught by trawling. By contrast, Australian prawn farming is done in tanks on land, making it a more sustainable industry.

Eat wild-caught Australian rock lobster. This year lobster prices are much lower than usual due to export issues. Australia’s rock lobster fisheries are generally sustainably fished, as opposed to imported lobster.

Eat farmed Australian oysters and mussels. It’s hard to go wrong here – fresh local oysters and mussels are widely available in stores and restaurants and are usually sustainable. Imported options are not widely available and are usually tinned.

Eat farmed Australian barramundi. Locally farmed barramundi is the most commonly available sustainable fish species. Some wild-caught Australian barramundi fisheries have issues with bycatch, while imported farmed barramundi have recurring issues with disease.

When in doubt, pick fresh Australian seafood. Australian fisheries are better managed than most others around the world, making local fish usually the better choice.

Labour and the Lords must take a stand against the draconian crackdown on demonstrators proposed by ministers

An already illiberal police and crime bill threatens to become even more so, if 18 pages of amendments added to it by the government in the House of Lords last month are accepted. A new criminal offence of obstructing major transport works, the expansion of stop and search powers and a new power for police to ban named people from demonstrations are clearly intended to strangle off what ministers are worried could be a new line in disruptive climate protests, after two months of roadblocks organised by the direct-action group Insulate Britain – and a decision by the supreme court earlier this year reaffirming the right of protesters to cause disruption.

Emboldened by the angry response to Insulate Britain from some members of the public, and criticism from paramedics about delays to ambulances, the home secretary, Priti Patel, and her colleagues have calculated that they can risk bypassing the scrutiny by MPs that is an essential part of our parliamentary process. In January, the Lords will have the opportunity to prove them wrong by rejecting these tacked-on, kneejerk measures.

At first I was full of dread but as I pressed on I noticed things I had never seen in daylight

• Guardian writers and readers describe their favourite place in New Zealand’s wilderness and why it’s special to them

I’m scared of getting lost in the bush. This is unusual for an essayist. Most of us like to go for a walk in disorienting landscapes and get completely lost so that we can write about it.

Rebecca Solnit wrote that getting lost is “a voluptuous surrender” but this sounds to me like walking in increasingly frantic circles, getting cold and hungry as night closes in, until you have no option but to dig yourself a little hole and cover yourself in leaves.

Curiously, the Pacific football fish, with spiny teeth and a bulb on its head, is the third to wash ashore this year

At first, the black blob spotted between rocks along the shores of San Diego this week was mistaken for a ball of tar. But as a concerned surfer approached, it became clear that this was something special.

The finned creature had a gaping underbite that revealed nightmarish spiny teeth, small black eyes, a tentacle-covered appendage and bulb protruding from its head.