The Guardian

Fossil fuel levy can be avoided by buying carbon offsets that may have no benefit for climate

Forest protection carbon offsets that may have no benefit to the climate have been used by polluters to avoid paying carbon taxes in Colombia, according to a report.

In 2016, a levy of about $5 (£3.60) was introduced in the South American country to cover the use of some fossil fuels. However, companies that emit carbon dioxide can avoid paying the tax by buying carbon offsets from Colombian emission reduction projects, including those that conserve threatened natural carbon banks such as peatlands, forests and mangrove swamps.

The demise of the freshly emerged swallowtail makes me ponder all butterflies’ chances of survival

Last week, I witnessed a wondrous and slightly horrifying spectacle of nature.

I was admiring a swallowtail, Britain’s largest native butterfly, as it jinked over a waterway on the Norfolk Broads. Suddenly, an emperor dragonfly cruised in and grabbed the butterfly. There was a mid-air tussle for five seconds, before the iridescent blue dragonfly dropped into the reed bed with its prize.

Investigating how the fossil fuel industry contributed to the climate crisis and lied to the American public

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China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam plan to build more than 600 coal power units

Five Asian countries are jeopardising global climate ambitions by investing in 80% of the world’s planned new coal plants, according to a report.

Carbon Tracker, a financial thinktank, has found that China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam plan to build more than 600 coal power units, even though renewable energy is cheaper than most new coal plants.

More money is being spent destroying the environment than protecting it, MPs’ report finds

The government’s underfunded green ambitions and “toothless” policies are failing to halt catastrophic loss of wildlife, a committee of MPs has said in a new report that finds the biodiversity crisis is still not being treated with the urgency of the climate crisis.

The UK is the most wildlife-depleted country out of the G7 nations and, despite pledges to improve the environment within a generation, properly funded policies are not in place to make this happen, according to the report from the environmental audit committee (EAC).

Majority of land at risk from a 1-metre sea level rise is in the tropics, research finds

Up to 410 million people will be living in areas less than 2 metres above sea level, and at risk from sea level rises, unless global emissions are reduced, according to a new study.

The paper, published in Nature Communications, finds that currently 267 million people worldwide live on land less than 2 metres above sea level. Using a remote sensing method called Lidar, which pulsates laser light across coastal areas to measure elevation on the Earth’s surface, the researchers predicted that by 2100, with a 1 metre sea level rise and zero population growth, that number could increase to 410 million people.

Count aims to provide crucial conservation data on animals including pangolins, turtles and antelope

Planes, helicopters, boats and 4x4s are being deployed, hundreds of camera traps and satellite collars monitored, and an array of dung studied across Kenya, as the country embarks on its first national census of wildlife.

The census, covering the country’s 58 national parks and reserves, private and community conservancies, is due to be completed by the end of July. It will cost 250m Kenyan shillings (£1.6m) and includes a count of terrestrial and marine mammals, key birds such as ostriches and kori bustards, and endangered primates. The results are expected in August.

First ever nationwide tally of trees reveals how communities of color and poorer neighborhoods lack canopy

With vast swathes of the American west baking under a record-setting heatwave, a new study has revealed how unevenly trees are spread throughout cities a in the United States and how much it disadvantages communities of color and the poor.

In order to address the balance, America needs to plant more than 30 million trees in major urban environments across the country, according to a major new report.

Experts says scientific advances are making it easier to attribute the damages of climate breakdown to companies’ activities

Businesses could soon be facing a fresh wave of legal action holding them to account for their greenhouse gas emissions, owing to advances in climate science, experts have warned.

More than 1,500 legal actions have already been brought against fossil fuel companies whose emissions over decades have played a major role in building up carbon in the atmosphere.

France was the only EU country that continued to allow ‘barbaric’ practice

France’s highest administrative appeals court has ruled that the hunting of songbirds with glue traps is illegal, saying an exemption that had permitted the practice was in breach of European legislation.

For generations, hunters mainly in the south of France have caught songbirds by coating branches of trees with glue, often using the singing of other caged birds to lure birds to land. Birds are caught for sport or food.

Small-scale fishers say mostly EU fleet is devastating catches with method that nets entire shoals of fish

The UK has been accused of allowing a fleet of mainly EU “fly-shooting” fishing boats “unfettered access” to the Channel, without a proper assessment of the impact on fish populations, the seabed or the livelihoods of small-scale fishers.

Organisations representing small-scale fishers on both sides of the Channel have warned that the fleet is having a “devastating” effect on their catches. They are calling for a review of the vessels’ UK licences until an impact assessment has been carried out.

• Man, 35, bitten on leg by shark estimated at 6ft to 8ft
• Great whites on rebound in west coast ecosystem

A surfer was severely injured in an attack by a great white shark off California on Saturday, one month after researchers found that numbers of the predator were growing in the region.

Related: Tiger sharks are not scared of hurricanes, US researchers say

Two men who were sunbathing naked on a beach south of Sydney had to be rescued after being startled by a deer and running into the Royal national park, New South Wales police commissioner Mick Fuller tells a press conference. The two men called for help after becoming lost in bushland, and were fined $1,000 each for breaching public health orders during greater Sydney's Covid-19 lockdown

• Buck naked: nude sunbathers fleeing deer fined for breaking Sydney lockdown
• Latest NSW rules and Sydney lockdown restrictions
• NSW Covid exposure sites and cases map

Bold climate targets are meaningless without policies to meet them. The PM should grab the chance to make Cop26 a success

Targets are all very well. But not if there is no way of reaching them. In which case, they are a sham. This is the problem now confronting the government. The UK’s stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 78% by 2035 compared with 1990 levels is very ambitious. “Remarkable” was the word used last week by Lord Deben (the former Conservative environment secretary John Gummer). He chairs the climate change committee (CCC) that advises the government. Its latest reports make an unflattering contrast between impressive aims and the absence of plans to meet them.

A strategy setting out how the UK intends to meet its net zero pledge is promised before the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow in November. But there is little sign so far that ministers grasp the scale of the challenge. Not a single government department, the CCC finds, is moving at the necessary pace. Transport, agriculture, buildings, industry: in all the key emissions-producing sectors bar power generation, there has been an alarming lack of progress. Cuts to the aid budget now overseen by the Foreign Office mean that it too is implicated. Support for poor countries as they make the transition away from fossil fuels has long been recognised as a crucial element of the global climate process.

Renewable energy will rely heavily on an industry already berated for human rights violations

Interest in Dogger Bank was once restricted to insomniac enthusiasts for the BBC’s Shipping Forecast. Not anymore. Today, the shallow sandbank located 120 miles off the UK’s north-eastern shoreline, is home to the world’s largest windpower project. When fully operational, giant turbines will transmit 3.6 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, enough to power 5m homes, into the national grid at prices well below current levels.

Welcome to the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. Across the world, solar and wind now represent the cheapest source of new electricity generation – and prices are tumbling. Electric vehicle (EV) batteries are driving oil towards obsolescence. Stripped of government subsidies and corporate lobbying carbon-based fuels are a busted flush. The future of energy is green – and the future can’t come soon enough to tackle the climate crisis.

Experts say they have found the ultimate version of the fruit. It’s called Ace, but now we just need enough foreign pickers

It would be easy to dismiss it as a marketing gimmick. A strawberry called Ace, announced on the eve of Wimbledon – surely, you cannot be serious? But the academics and strawberry breeders of the East Malling research institute are not given to cheap slogans. Malling Ace is a super strawberry that is creating more excitement in the world of horticulture than even the possibility of another Andy Murray title.

“The Ace name sort of indicates what we felt about it – it really, really does excel,” said Adam Whitehouse, who led the Malling Ace project. “It’s a new variety that has been fast-tracked through our system because it really did stand out and it caused a lot of excitement at such an early stage.”

Police seize equipment from three premises before what officers expect will be busy weekend of protests

Police in London have raided a warehouse used by Extinction Rebellion, as well as an arts centre that was exhibiting some of the structures used in the demonstrations that blockaded newspaper printing plants last year.

The Met is under increased scrutiny as the group plans further protests against the owners of the UK’s press outlets this weekend, alongside supporters of the Black Lives Matter campaign against racial injustice.

Citizen zookeepers release endangered large marsh grasshopper in former strongholds

Britain’s largest grasshopper is being bred in captivity by citizen zookeepers and returned to marshes across East Anglia in a move to revive the endangered species.

The large marsh grasshopper, an elusive green insect that can appear in a striking pink-and-yellow form, is too isolated in fragments of wetland to hop back to its former strongholds.

Ecology experts say failure to hit five-year goals concerning although feral cat progress promising

A Coalition government strategy to save Australia’s endangered wildlife has failed to meet targets to stem the decline of many birds, mammals and plants.

The final-year report of the five-year threatened species strategy, which was introduced under the former environment minister Greg Hunt, has found five out of the strategy’s 13 targets were met, three were partially met and five were not met.

‘Eco schemes’ to be supported are undefined and three-quarters of €387bn CAP budget will go to intensive farming, say critics

The environmental claims of a newly agreed €387bn (£330bn) EU farming subsidy policy have been described as a “paper reality”, despite a commitment that a quarter of its budget will be spent on “eco schemes”.

A new five-year common agricultural policy (CAP) was provisionally agreed by the European parliament, European Commission and the 27 member states on Friday after two and a half years of negotiations.