The Guardian

Researchers find ‘significant relationship’ between stony coral tissue loss disease and nearby shipping

A virulent and fast-moving coral disease that has swept through the Caribbean could be linked to waste or ballast water from ships, according to research.

The deadly infection, known as stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), was first identified in Florida in 2014, and has since moved through the region, causing great concern among scientists.

The politics of this new, extreme individualism will make collective responses to social crises impossible

Soon, a few of the more shameless newspaper commentators will urge the rest of us to “learn to live” with climate breakdown. Soon, a couple of especially sharp-elbowed cabinet ministers will sigh to the Spectator that, yes, carbon emissions should ideally be slashed – but we must make a trade-off between “lives and livelihoods”. Soon, a little platoon of Tory backbenchers will respond to TV pictures of another devastating flash flood or deadly heatwave by complaining about “fearmongering”. “Why is the BBC so doomy?” they’ll ask, as the death toll rises.

Soon, shockingly soon, the cheap shots, the brazen stat-bending and the coprophagic cynicism that have warped British discourse since March 2020 will migrate from Covid to an even bigger and more lethal crisis: the climate emergency. And just as they have helped shape the self-inflicted catastrophe that England has embarked upon this week, so they will work their terrible influence on that one.

A new study shows carbon pollution on the same route can vary sharply but consumers currently cannot make informed choices

Commercial flying is a real carbon bomb as emissions from commercial aviation are growing rapidly and are on track to triple by 2050, when they could make up about a quarter of the global carbon budget.

But now a new study shows how people could reduce their emissions while still flying on airplanes, if they were able to choose the most carbon-friendly routes.

We have an opportunity to reorient our lives back towards nature, reshaping our economy to benefit all Australians – human and non-human

Australian wildlife. Koalas, platypus, wallabies. We use them as our emblems, put them on our coins, name our sporting teams after them and companies use them as logos. Echidnas, dingoes, kangaroos. They are part of the fabric of our national identity. And so they should be. Most of them are found nowhere else on Earth. Wombats, numbats, bettongs. This continent is home to an amazing diversity of plants and animals, not to mention the unique landscapes they call home. They make Australia what it is and were here long before humans arrived. Antechinus, quolls, phascogales. But do we actually care about them? Of course we do! But can we honestly say that, if we judge ourselves by our actions? Thylacine, Bramble Cay melomys, Christmas Island pipistrelle.

Related: Legal threat stops work on mine project in Tasmania’s Tarkine

Hunter and Latrobe valleys considered particularly suitable sites as union says industry could offer oil and gas workers a career transition

Australia has the potential to develop a substantial offshore wind energy industry from scratch, with abundant resources available near existing electricity substations across the continent, according to a new report.

The Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre said Australia was yet to capitalise on significant offshore wind capacity despite the International Energy Agency nominating it as one of the “big three” likely sources of renewable energy globally alongside solar and onshore wind.

Natural England biodiversity metric will let valuable wildlife habitat be logged as ‘degraded’ land and penalise rewilding, warn ecologists

The government’s new metric for biodiversity will have to be urgently improved if it is going to be fit for purpose, academics and conservationists have warned.

The biodiversity net gain (BNG) metric, published by Natural England in July, outlines how new roads, houses and other building projects must achieve no net loss of biodiversity, or achieve a 10% net gain elsewhere if nature is damaged on site.

Slow-moving storms such as recent deluge in Germany could become 14 times more frequent by 2100

Catastrophic floods such as those that struck Europe recently could become much more frequent as a result of global heating, researchers say.

High-resolution computer models suggest that slow-moving storms could become 14 times more common over land by the end of the century in a worst-case scenario. The slower a storm moves, the more rain it dumps on a small area and the greater the risk of serious flooding.

As Australians have been preoccupied by coronavirus, a wider environmental calamity has unfurled. The emergency isn’t over, it’s only just beginning

Build back better. In the early days of Covid-19, that slogan rang out everywhere: a pledge to harness disruption for positive change.

For a time, everything felt possible. There are no atheists in foxholes and, we discovered, no free marketeers in a pandemic, as even the most conservative governments pledged to spend on a scale previously unimaginable.

Both spend similar amounts of money but men use cars much more, Swedish analysis shows

Men’s spending on goods causes 16% more climate-heating emissions than women’s, despite the sum of money being very similar, a study has found.

The biggest difference was men’s spending on petrol and diesel for their cars. The gender differences in emissions have been little studied, the researchers said, and should be recognised in action to beat the climate crisis.

Water that should be crystal clear has become a green-brown slop of microscopic algae because of industrial farm waste

There’s more below the surface than we thought – something even worse than the water companies’ disgusting habit of filling our rivers with raw sewage. After a deep dive into the data, the team that made Rivercide last week discovered that while sewage now dominates our perceptions of river pollution, it’s not their major cause of death.

On the border between Wales and England, we found a great river dying before our eyes. The Wye is covered by every possible conservation law, but in just a few years it has spiralled towards complete ecological collapse. The vast beds of water crowfoot, the long fluttering weed whose white and yellow flowers once bedecked the surface of the river, and which – like mangroves around tropical seas – provide the nurseries in which young fish and other animals grow and adults hide and breed, have almost vanished in recent years. Our own mapping suggests a loss of between 90% and 97%.

Exclusive: Diplomatic email suggests whirlwind lobbying trip by Sussan Ley has won over at least nine of 21 members on World Heritage Committee

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Australia’s global lobbying offensive to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the world heritage “in danger” list has secured support from at least nine of the 21-member committee that will make the decision, according to a diplomatic email seen by Guardian Australia.

Australia’s Paris-based ambassador to Unesco, Megan Anderson, said in the email she believed the government had won enough support to delay the decision on the “in danger” listing until at least 2023.

Monitoring suggests toxic smoke in Yakutsk is one of world’s worst ever air pollution events

• ‘Everything is on fire’: Siberia hit by unprecedented burning

A heatwave in one of the world’s coldest regions has sparked forest fires and threatened the Siberian city of Yakutsk with an “airpocalypse” of thick toxic smoke, atmospheric monitoring services have reported.

High levels of particulate matter and possibly also chemicals including ozone, benzene and hydrogen cyanide are thought likely to make this one of the world’s worst ever air pollution events.

The US climate envoy, appointed by Joe Biden to spearhead the country’s international efforts to tackle the climate emergency, urged all large economies to come forward with new plans to cut emissions before the Cop26 UN climate talks in Glasgow this November.

‘While it may be unfolding in slow motion to some,’ he said, ‘this test is as acute and as existential as any previous one. Time is running out.’

• John Kerry: world leaders must step up to avoid worst impacts of climate crisis

Reporting on the pandemic and global heating is an immense responsibility. More than ever we have to look to the possibility of positive change

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This time last year Victoria was enduring its long winter of Covid isolation. Other states were cautiously loosening restrictions. Most Australians were clinging to the assumption that the pandemic would end, sometime. Vaccines would be developed and, once we’d all got them, the threat would be over. We just had to hang in there until it was done.

Now the idea of a neat end point is far less certain because mutated versions of the virus keep slipping through our defences and closing down our lives again, just as we dare to make even the most modest of plans.

US envoy uses landmark speech in London to make impassioned plea for unified global effort

The world still has a chance of staving off the worst impacts of climate breakdown but only if governments step up in the next few months with stronger commitments on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the US envoy for climate change has said.

John Kerry, appointed by Joe Biden to spearhead the US’s international efforts to tackle the crisis, urged all large economies to come forward with new plans to cut emissions before the Cop26 UN climate talks in Glasgow this November.

Joe Manchin owns millions of dollars in coal stock, founded an energy firm and Exxon lobbyists brag about their access to him. Republicans fundraise on his behalf

As “thousand-year” heat waves caused by the climate crisis rock the west coast and biblical floods engulf major cities, Senate Democrats are negotiating a $3.5tn budget package that could include an attempt to slow the use of fossil fuels over the next decade.

One prominent senator is very concerned about proposals to scale back oil, gas and coal usage. He recently argued that those who want to “get rid of” fossil fuels are wrong. Eliminating fossil fuels won’t help fight global heating, he claimed, against all evidence. “If anything, it would be worse.”

Support for coal, oil and gas remains high despite pledges to tackle climate crisis

The G20 countries have provided more than $3.3tn (£2.4tn) in subsidies for fossil fuels since the Paris climate agreement was sealed in 2015, a report shows, despite many committing to tackle the crisis.

This backing for coal, oil and gas is “​​reckless” in the face of the escalating climate emergency, according to the report’s authors, and urgent action is needed to phase out the support. The $3.3tn could have built solar plants equivalent to three times the US electricity grid, the report says.

This summer’s group photography exhibition at Bildhalle, Zurich, explores the theme of oceans, taken from the perspective of viewers standing on the shore

• Ocean runs at Bildhalle, Zurich, 15 July to 25 September

Exclusive: Stars, activists, conservationists and Prince Albert of Monaco unite in support of Unesco’s recommendation to world heritage committee

An international line-up of actors, conservationists and scientists, including Joanna Lumley and Hollywood star Jason Momoa, has backed calls for the Great Barrier Reef to be placed on a list of world heritage sites in danger.

“The scientific evidence is beyond doubt: the Great Barrier Reef is in danger and it is time to act,” the group said in a global statement released to Guardian Australia.

Worldwide energy body warns more must be done to help developing countries give up fossil fuels

Global greenhouse gas emissions are likely to rise to record levels in the next two years, as governments fail to “build back better” from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Emissions will rise again this year and next year, after a fall last year, and 2023 is now on track to see the highest levels of carbon dioxide output in human history, equalling or surpassing the record set in 2018, according to forecasts released by the International Energy Agency on Tuesday.