The Guardian

Office for Environmental Protection says targets for water quality likely to be missed, and clarifying rules may help

The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) watchdog has launched an investigation into the UK government over potential failures to clean up England’s rivers under EU-derived laws.

The OEP published a report last year saying that plans to clean up waterways were too generic and did not address specific issues at individual sites. It said plans were being put in place despite low government confidence that their objectives could be achieved.

As droughts become more prevalent, corporate control over our drinking water is threatening the health of water sources and the access people have to them. Josh Toussaint-Strauss explores how foreign multinational companies are extracting billions of litres of water from natural aquifers to sell back to the same communities from which it came – for huge profits

• ‘It’s not drought - it’s looting’: the Spanish villages where people are forced to buy back their own drinking water

• Foreign firms taking billions of litres from UK aquifers to make bottled water

The run-up to 2016 shows ‘common sense’ isn’t enough. Even ignorant, reactionary arguments must be properly countered

Kemi Badenoch’s speech on climate this week was not interesting of itself: she said net zero couldn’t be achieved by 2050 “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”. She has no expertise in climate science, no background in renewables or apparent familiarity with the advances made in their technology, no qualification in economics – just about the only bit of that sentence she knows anything about is bankrupting us.

Yet even if Badenoch can take its particulars and shove them, the fact of its existence is interesting for a number of reasons. First, this attack on net zero has been predicted, not secretly by new-Conservative fellow travellers, though conceivably them too, but by progressives – and for years. Among the first was the Cambridge academic David Runciman, who predicted a backlash against action on the climate crisis as the new galvanising issue on the radical right after it had moved on from Brexit. On his Talking Politics podcast, he was in conversation with Ed Miliband, who took that point but said he hoped Runciman was wrong. He was not wrong.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Researchers cite £2.4bn annual cost of flooding and say a third of England’s critical infrastructure is at risk

Spending on flood defences will fall off a cliff edge next year, a report warns, calling on the chancellor to commit at least £1.5bn a year in the spending review to protect the economy and the public.

Nearly 2 million people across the UK are exposed to flooding every year, which is equivalent to the combined populations of Birmingham, Sheffield and Newcastle upon Tyne.

The verdict in North Dakota state court came after two days of deliberations in a trial where company Energy Transfer accused Greenpeace of defamation and orchestrating criminal behaviour to disrupt the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. The project is located near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation. Deepa Padmanabha, Greenpeace’s senior legal adviser, said Greenpeace will appeal the decision.

• Greenpeace must pay at least $660m over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury

Scotland’s first minister says Grangemouth could become world leader in green fuels

There is a realistic chance that one of the UK’s largest oil refineries can be converted into a hub for green chemicals, sustainable fuels and plastics, according to Scotland’s first minister.

Grangemouth oil refinery, which is being shut down by its UK and Chinese owners PetroIneos this year with the loss of 400 jobs, could become a world leader in low carbon chemicals and green fuels, John Swinney told media on Wednesday.

Increased cost of the fossil fuel has also cut forecasts of how much gas will be needed in Australia’s southern states

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High gas prices and a shift towards running homes and businesses on electricity has helped delay an expected gas shortage in Australia’s southern states until 2028, a government agency says.

A report by the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) said the increased cost of the fossil fuel and trend towards electrification had combined with mild winters to reduce gas use.

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Thousands sign petition to save ‘vital’ Dartington Estate project that teaches agroforestry methods

Even at this time of year when most of the trees are still bare, there is a feeling of abundance in Martin Crawford’s forest garden, close to the banks of the River Dart in Devon.

Crawford, who has nurtured this landmark garden for three decades, is clearly in his element, pointing out the edible plants that flourish in the tangly two-acre patch, stooping from time to time to pick a leaf or green shoot and take a nibble.

Litter such as crisp packets and bottle tops are polluting the coast at the rate of nearly two items a sq metre, conservation charity report finds

Single-use plastic waste increased on UK and Channel Island beaches last year with items such as crisp packets and bottle tops polluting the coast at the rate of almost two items a sq metre, according to data from beach cleanups.

The amount of plastic waste collected on beaches rose by 9.5% in 2024, compared with 2023, and more than three-quarters of a million pieces of waste were picked up by volunteers, according to evidence from the State of our Beaches report by the Marine Conservation Society.

I drove 2,000 miles with a French friend across my home country – and saw the endless nowhere land that is the crucible of Trumpism

In 1941 Dorothy Thompson, an American journalist who reported from Germany in the lead-up to the second world war, wrote an essay for Harper’s about the personality types most likely to be attracted to Nazism, headlined “Who Goes Nazi?” “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t – whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi,” Thompson wrote.

Talia Lavin, a US writer, recently gave Thompson’s idea an update on Substack with an essay of her own: “Who Goes Maga?”

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe correspondent

The potential layoffs listed in documents reviewed by Democrats are part of the White House'’s broader push to shrink the federal government

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to eliminate its scientific research office and could fire more than 1,000 scientists and other employees who help provide the scientific foundation for rules safeguarding human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants.

As many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists – 75% of the research programme’s staff – could be laid off, according to documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the house committee on science, space and technology.

Commission launched in 2022 says lagoon project, not full barrage, should be backed by UK and Welsh governments

Urgent action is needed to harness the UK’s potential for tidal range energy in the Severn estuary but smaller lagoon models should be pursued over a larger dam-like barrage, a panel of experts has said.

The Severn Estuary Commission said that harnessing the energy of the tides in the estuary could deliver predictable, renewable electricity that would work independent of weather conditions.

Floods, heatwaves and supercharged hurricanes occurred in hottest climate human society has ever experienced

The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.

The WMO’s report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008.

Chris Weston and Alastair Cochran targeted by group who accuse them of causing a public nuisance

Environmental campaigners have attempted citizen’s arrests of the chief executive and chief financial officer of Thames Water on suspicion of causing a causing a public nuisance.

The campaigners accuse Chris Weston and Alastair Cochran of five to seven counts of the offence, which is regularly used against protesters, including illegal discharge of sewage, mismanagement of customer funds and operating unsafe infrastructure.

BYD unveils platform with charging power of 1,000 kW, which would be twice as fast as Tesla’s supercharging

• Can BYD’s batteries really charge in five minutes?

The Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD has unveiled a new charging system that it said could make it possible for EVs to charge as quickly as it takes to refill with petrol.

BYD’s Hong Kong-listed shares gained 4.1% on Tuesday to hit a record high of 408.80 Hong Kong dollars, as investors bet that the company could strengthen its already commanding position as one of the world’s biggest electric carmakers.

New study finds dolphins, including critically endangered Burrunan, have among the world’s highest levels of chemicals banned decades ago

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It has been half a century since governments around the world, faced with overwhelming evidence, started banning early generations of what we now call forever chemicals. Industrial chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and the notorious pesticide DDT had been widely used – DDT is credited with saving millions of lives from insect-borne disease, while PCBs were vital in electrical safety – before it was understood that they were serious environmental toxins.

“The problem with these legacy contaminants,” environmental scientist Chantel Foord says, “is that they’re amazing in our products because they don’t break down, but they’re equally devastating in our environment because they don’t break down.”

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Deal will restrict fishing near colonies on Robben Island and Bird Island for 10 years, after long debate between industry and conservationists

Efforts to stop the critically endangered African penguin from going extinct took a step forward on Tuesday after South African conservationists and fishing industry groups reached a legal settlement on no-fishing zones around six of the penguins’ major breeding colonies.

Sardine and anchovy fishing will not be allowed for 12 miles (20km) around the penguin colony off Cape Town on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, and Bird Island, across the bay from Gqeberha, also known as Port Elizabeth. There will be more limited closures around four other colonies, according to a court order formalising the agreement.

Flying lobsters, cuttlefish ink and stargazy pie … Jon Tonks got on his kayak to spend 18 months photographing the incredible fishing communities around England’s south-west coast

Ana Toni also criticises the UK’s plans to slash overseas aid to fund defence spending

Countries looking to boost their national security through rearmament or increased defence spending must also bolster their climate efforts or face more wars in the future, one of the leaders of the next UN climate summit has warned.

Some countries could decide to include climate spending in their defence budgets, suggested Ana Toni, Brazil’s chief executive of the Cop30 summit.

Hunter Wildlife Rescue started receiving numerous reports of sick and dead birds on Monday, centred on the suburbs Hamilton and Carrington

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New South Wales authorities are investigating the possible poisoning and mass deaths of more than 150 little corellas in Newcastle.

Kate Randolph, the acting president of Hunter Wildlife Rescue, described the incident as “extremely confronting” and said volunteers and local vets were doing everything they could to rescue surviving, severely sick birds.

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