The Guardian

Industry bosses concerned energy crisis may cause production slowdowns and factory shutdowns

The risk of power cuts to factories and homes this winter has increased, the National Grid warned, as the business secretary prepared for a crunch meeting with industry bosses concerned the energy crisis may force them to scale back production.

The price of gas and electricity has soared in recent weeks, leading to the collapse of multiple energy suppliers and prompting warnings of higher costs for consumers, factory shutdowns and increased pollution as plants switch to dirtier but cheaper fuels.

Fishmeal exports to EU from west Africa have grown sharply, depleting stocks and posing threat to livelihoods

Greenpeace activists have intercepted a 96-metre tanker in the Channel carrying fish oil from west Africa to Europe, to highlight the threat they say industry poses to food security and to livelihoods in the region.

Trade figures analysed by Greenpeace Africa show that fishmeal and fish oil exports from Mauritania alone have grown by an “alarming” 16% during 2020. Activists and locals say the industry pushes up prices and depletes stocks of fish eaten by local people across poor communities in Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia.

Since 1988, humans have destroyed an area of rainforest roughly the size of Texas and New Mexico combined

Shortly before his 44th birthday, in December 1988, the Brazilian rubber tapper and environmental activist Chico Mendes predicted he would not live until Christmas. “At first,” he said, “I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”

Mendes had received death threats for years. The threats escalated when an aggressive rancher laid claim to a nearby forest reserve, where he intended to burn and level trees to create pasture for cattle. The rancher hired gunmen to prowl around Mendes’s neighborhood. Mendes publicly opposed the rancher, and continued to advocate for the human rights of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin, saying Brazil must save the most biodiverse forest in the world. Destroy it, he said, and we, the human race, will end up destroying ourselves.

Highlights of the Royal Society of Biology’s photography competition 2021, from ants feasting on honeydew to zebras drinking in the savannah

Climate groups concerned about presence in Glasgow of officers from forces known for heavy-handed tactics

Climate campaigners are worried an influx of officers from elsewhere in the UK will undermine Police Scotland’s commitment to rights-based policing of protests at Cop26.

Groups planning protests around the critical November conference have told the Guardian they are concerned about the presence of officers from forces known for their use of heavy-handed tactics and that it is unclear how they will be held to account for their behaviour.

Banning fishing does not mean populations simply bounce back, as scientists found off Scotland’s west coast

The closure of the Clyde fishery has led to the recovery of marine species – but not the same species as lived there before, according to a report.

Published in the journal Current Biology, the paper found the marine ecosystem of west Scotland’s Clyde Sea shows signs of recovery after a reduction in fishing pressure, but with sprat now the dominant species instead of herring.

Experts say results of Butterfly Conservation’s latest survey signal that nature is ‘in crisis’

The UK has recorded its lowest ever number of butterflies in an annual survey of the insects, prompting conservationists to warn that nature is in crisis.

Butterfly Conservation, which counted butterflies and moths between 16 July and 8 August, said the results, released on Thursday, marked the lowest numbers since the Big Butterfly Count started 12 years ago and called for urgent action to be taken.

Artist Georgia Angus has drawn 25 birds from this year’s poll and we’ve created a poster for Guardian readers to download and enjoy. Use it as a desktop background, print it as an A1-sized poster, a tea towel or a tote bag – the choice is yours

• Vote now in the Australian bird of the year poll 2021
• Download the poster as PDF here or JPEG here

This year’s poll has had its share of controversies.

The pelican crashed out despite a high-profile campaign in support, the late surge in support for the otherwise unloved galah, and the regent honeyeater coming back from the brink after a heartfelt plea from BirdLife’s Sean Dooley.

A flash of colour that caught my eye at the age of 10 in 1968 – that’s how far back I trace a sense of obligation to care for the biodiversity that was here first

• Australian bird of the year poll 2021

A flash of colour that takes my eye at the age of 10 in 1968 and learning that it is an Adelaide rosella.

Reaching the edge of a vast swamp north of Birdsville in 1982 thinking, “This is perfect habitat for grey grasswrens. They must be here.” And they are! Right at the edge of the road – just the third population ever discovered until then of an inland Australian bird only described to science in 1969.

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Some old favourites have fallen by the wayside, but it’s all to play for on Thursday as supporters of eliminated birds decide which finalist to back

Vote now for your chosen bird

The cassowary is long gone. So too the sulphur-crested cockatoo, the swift parrot, the shy albatross and the spotted pardalote.

No, there hasn’t been (another) mass extinction (yet) but the new voting format in the 2021 Guardian Australia/Birdlife Australia bird of the year poll means the competition has morphed into a brutal kind of ornithological Game of Thrones.

Catastrophes like fires and floods could set the economy back more than $1.2tn by 2060, even if action is taken

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Climate change-related disasters will cost Australia $73bn a year by 2060, even if action to curb emissions is taken now, a report has found.

And if nothing is done to tackle climate change, that figure will grow to $94bn a year by that date, a study by Deloitte Access Economics says.

Trillions of dollars a year are ‘adding fuel to the fire’ of the climate crisis, experts say

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were “adding fuel to the fire” of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.

Organisers of Glasgow climate talks said to blame Brexit and the pandemic for fees up to 30% higher than Cop25

Countries and organisations planning to host events at vital UN climate talks in Glasgow next month have said they fear that increased costs at this year’s event will cause problems for developing nations.

Multiple participants said that the cost of renting Cop26 pavilions – event spaces for hosting workshops, panel discussions and keynote speeches during the conference – is considerably higher than it was at Cop25 in Madrid, with some saying it had increased by as much as 30%.

Priti Patel’s plans to restrict civil liberties make it all the more important that activists keep the public on their side

A draconian police and crime bill is making its way through parliament, and on Tuesday the home secretary, Priti Patel, told her party’s conference that she planned to remove even more rights from political protesters. New offences of disrupting motorways and national infrastructure will be added to legislation that already dramatically expands police powers. Tory members applauded their illiberal home secretary loudly as she denounced the Insulate Britain protesters who have repeatedly blocked roads.

Many others, including the former prime minister Theresa May, have voiced concerns about a bill that creates a new criminal offence of trespass, lets the police dictate the timings of demonstrations and restrict protests deemed (by them) to be causing noise and “nuisance”. These are shocking restrictions, clearly designed to make impossible the kinds of actions that anti-racism and environmental protesters have undertaken in recent years, including those that followed the murder of George Floyd. Six-month sentences for new offences that were previously treated as civil matters are excessive. But Ms Patel is unafraid of the charge of authoritarianism, and knows that it plays well with her home crowd. Her speech sought to present desperate Channel-crossing migrants and road-blocking protesters as the enemies of law-abiding Britons, along with the paedophiles and murderers whose sentences her bill will also increase.

Industry calls for levy to fund new technologies – but environmentalists say proposal blocks climate progress

The global shipping industry has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by mid-century – but only if governments impose a mandatory levy on shipping fuel to fund the development of new low-carbon technology.

The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), which represents the majority of the global shipping industry, submitted the plans to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the worldwide regulator and part of the UN.

100-strong group will be representative of world’s population and will present their findings to Cop26

One hundred people from around the world are to take part in a citizens’ assembly to discuss the climate crisis over the next month, before presenting their findings at the UN Cop26 climate summit.

The Global Citizens’ Assembly will be representative of the world’s population, and will invite people chosen by lottery to take part in online discussions that will culminate in November, during the fortnight-long climate talks that open in Glasgow on 31 October.

Kit Malthouse draws contrast between causing disruption and causing damage, as crackdown is announced

• Tory party conference – live updates

Climate change protesters “crossed the line” between their right to protest and their responsibility towards the rest of the public when they caused huge tailbacks by blocking three key London roads on Monday, the policing minister, Kit Malthouse has said.

New measures will be announced to crack down on protesters who target road networks and critical national infrastructure, which “is of a different scale of damage than you would otherwise find with a normal protest”, the junior minister said.

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema says access to Covid jabs for developing world will be critical to the success of in-person Kunming Cop15 summit

Governments hoping for a global agreement to halt biodiversity loss must put more effort into access to Covid-19 vaccines for developing countries, the UN’s biodiversity chief has warned.

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said the Kunming Cop15 summit, at which governments will try to forge a “Paris agreement for nature”, was vital for halting the global crisis of species loss.

MEPs call for EU ban on all outsourced labour after Guardian investigation finds unequal pay and terms

The EU is facing calls to ban outsourcing in the meat industry, after a Guardian investigation revealed how agency workers were exploited by companies that took no responsibility for pay and conditions.

Katrin Langensiepen, vice-chair of the European parliament’s employment and social affairs committee, said the EU should ban subcontracting across all economic sectors to ensure workers receive the same pay and conditions for the same work.