The Guardian

Report also calls for ban on black plastic and an end to bottom trawling at sea

Litter louts should be fined a minimum of £500 as part of measures to protect wildlife, according to a thinktank.

Bright Blue recommends 50 new policies in its report, including banning black plastic and non-flushable wipes, ending UK taxpayer subsidies for wood burning in power stations and outlawing the destructive practice of bottom trawling at sea.

Failure to fully implement 14 of 16 recommendations to regulate CSG extraction could lead to more support for moratorium across NSW

Santos’s coal seam gas project near Narrabri could face further obstacles after a parliamentary inquiry delivered a scathing assessment of the state government’s progress in implementing recommendations to regulate coal seam gas extraction.

A New South Wales legislative council inquiry found that 14 of 16 recommendations from the 2014 report by the chief scientist have not been implemented in full. Half were found to have not been implemented at all.

Australia is heating faster than the global average, and extreme heat days are on the rise. Doctors say there’s clear evidence that it’s killing people prematurely

Farmers and consumers know they cannot believe the prime minister’s assurances over post-Brexit standards

Most people pay little attention to the chain of production that brings food to their plates. Americans eat tonnes of chicken every year, unaware of, or unconcerned by, the chemical rinse applied to its pre-cooked carcass. British consumers might also eat chlorine-washed chicken if they had acquired the habit, but since they haven’t the idea is unappetising. This is a problem in transatlantic trade talks because US agribusiness wants access to UK dining tables. The politics of serving food prepared to US safety standards is tricky on a number of levels. Alongside chlorinated chicken, the use of growth-promoting hormones and antibiotics in meat production are more tightly regulated in Europe than in many countries that want to export their surplus meat. After Brexit, the UK can abandon EU standards, but if it does so it will find its produce barred from continental markets.

Eurosceptics call that protectionism, and partly it is. European food safety standards have a scientific rationale – the idea is that hygiene should be maintained all along the chain, not dealt with at the last stage by blasting microbes with disinfectant. But those rules are bundled up with a system that insulates the sector from global competition. The EU subsidises farmers, recognising how destabilising it would be if a glut of cheap American produce was dumped on their markets. Some Eurosceptics embrace that destabilisation as an economic tonic, others deny it would happen. Pro-leave campaigners advertised cheaper food as a benefit of Brexit, omitting to explain that a price would be paid by farmers. That sleight of hand was easier to accomplish in propaganda than as government policy. The National Farmers’ Union vehemently opposes lowering regulatory barriers to American produce. The NFU president, Minette Batters, this week said doing so would be “insane” and “morally bankrupt”. Downing Street insists high standards will be maintained, but Boris Johnson wants a trade deal with the US and is not renowned for keeping his word. George Eustice, the environment secretary, tries to assuage farmers’ fears without giving them explicit guarantees.

Wild Justice takes legal action citing ‘ecological assault’ and harm to rare wildlife from mass release of shoots’ birds

Environmental campaigners have issued a legal case against the government to try to halt the release of more than 50m non-native game birds this summer, saying the birds could damage Britain’s most important wildlife sites.

Wild Justice, a campaign group led by the environmentalists Chris Packham, Mark Avery, and Ruth Tingay, said the annual release of 47m pheasants and 10m red-legged partridges was “unlawful” without proper assessment of the ecological impacts the animals had on protected areas.

George Eustice rejects need for inquiry as NFU president calls for ‘seismic investment’

The government has rejected calls for a public inquiry into the flooding disaster, arguing it has the crisis under control.

The environment secretary, George Eustice, came under sustained attack at the National Farmers’ Union annual conference but said the government had already saved thousands of homes from flooding and would be spending “record” amounts on future defences.

Jeremy Corbyn has called out the prime minister for not visiting victims of the UK's recent flooding and accused him of only 'pretending to care'. The Labour party leader called Boris Johnson a 'part-time prime minister', also noting his absences during the London riots and when Qassem Suleimani was killed

• Full story: Corbyn criticises Johnson's response to floods

The toxin has endangered hundreds of thousands of kids. But parents in the hardest-hit neighborhoods may never be warned of the threat

Shanaya Ball did everything right during her pregnancy: she attended check-ups, ate well, and kitted out the nursery for her son Amari, who was born in March 2017.

But by his first birthday, Amari had failed to meet almost every developmental milestone, and was unable to play, communicate or move like other infants.

World’s second biggest miner says it will reduce emissions by 15% by 2030, but ‘will not set targets for our customers’

Mining giant Rio Tinto says it wants its globe-spanning operations to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and will spend US$1bn over the next five years to reduce its carbon footprint.

The second biggest miner in the world has also committed to reducing its emissions by 15% by 2030.

A group of experts has called for the ban in response to ‘climate, fire and drought’ but others say it is a ‘simplistic solution to a complex problem’

A group of forestry and climate scientists are calling for an immediate and permanent end to the logging of all native forests across Australia as part of a response to climate change and the country’s bushfire crisis.

In an open letter, the group said forestry workers involved in logging in native forests should be redeployed to support the management of national parks.

Diagnosed with lung cancer, author Andrew Darby found hope in the endurance of ultramarathon shorebirds – and the book he was writing about them

• Flight Lines: the heroic story of two migratory shorebirds
• Read more about Guardian Australia’s Unmissable series

I have a thing for motels. Out of all the choices we have today, I find these plain, predictable buildings a comforting way to be away from home. So as I lay in bed at the Beaumaris Bay Motel, harrowed by fantasies of death as I slept, and gasping for air when awake, at least I was in familiar surroundings.

Embarking on my book Flight Lines I took among wildlife literature as a guiding light The Great Soul of Siberia, Sooyong Park’s quest for the Siberian tiger. Park’s philosophy was that nature was to be observed and not directed. He sentenced himself to life hidden in a little hand-dug bunker, snowbound for months beside a wildlife trail on a remote mountain range, in exchange for minutes of tiger.

Calls for sachets to be included in UK and European legislation banning other single-use items

The government must act urgently to stamp out the “curse” of single-use plastic sachets, billions of which are helping to fuel the global plastics crisis, campaigners are warning.

A coalition of more than 50 business leaders, politicians and campaigners is demanding that the plastic sachets – used for everything from ketchup to shampoo – be included in European and UK legislation outlawing other “throwaway” items such as plastic straws and cotton buds.

Nathusius’ pipistrelle sightings reported from as far apart as Cornwall and Scotland

An elusive British mammal, the tiny bat Nathusius’ pipistrelle (Pipistrellus nathusii), may be more widespread and numerous than previously thought.

Sometimes described as a rare visitor or a new coloniser because of climate change, it may have been here decades but had gone undetected.

President of farmers’ union says attacks on meat industry cause ‘enormous damage’

The National Farmers’ Union has criticised stars such as Joaquin Phoenix who use their celebrity to promote veganism, claiming the growth in meat-free living is fuelling a rise in mental health problems among British farmers.

Days after the Joker actor’s Oscars speech attacking the meat industry, the NFU president, Minette Batters, said farmers fearing the imminent loss of their livelihoods and family holdings were in a state of stress and anxiety.

Protecting against coastal flooding, boosting recycling and ensuring water security are now high priority initiatives

Rising sea levels, water security and waste management are among the environmental challenges that Infrastructure Australia has, for the first time, elevated to the top tier of its priorities list.

In its latest list, to be released on Wednesday, Infrastructure Australia said it was elevating environmental concerns because climate change was altering the water cycle and was projected to cause sea level rises of 0.4 to 0.6 metres. It also cited a renewed focus on “resilience” in the face of natural disasters.

Political interference in scientific research has been weaponised during the past decade, and we are all suffering the consequences

Policies matter. Good policies lead to good outcomes, while bad policies can lead to disaster. But what about where there is no policy, or a policy that is incohesive and incomplete? We only need to look at the state of science research policy in Australia to find out.

Scientific research in Australia has always suffered from political influence, because research in Australia is heavily dependent on federal government funding. But political interference in scientific research has been weaponised during the past decade of Coalition governments.

Premier says overhaul will ‘take responsibility for our waste’ and help fix longstanding problems

The Victorian government will double its $28m in grants for businesses to sort and process recycling as part of a $96.5m package to fix the state’s waste industry.

Another $30m will be opened up for grants for technology to create new products from recyclable materials such as glass, plastic, organics, electronic waste, concrete, brick and rubber.

Labor needs to move the debate beyond slogans and shouting by arguing that despite its environmental downsides, coal has a place

Having reached the self-evident conclusion that one can’t win government without the support of at least a handful of regional communities, Labor is now coming to terms with its use of the C-word.

With their opponents to their left and their right taking up the crude chant of “coal, coal, coal” – as shorthand for economic betrayal on the one side and environmental betrayal on the other – watching Labor field questions on climate is like watching a tightrope walker attempt to cross Niagara Falls.

Norwegian oil company announces it has scrapped its $200m plan to deepwater drill in Great Australian Bight Marine Park

Norwegian oil giant Equinor has abandoned plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight, declaring the controversial project did not make commercial sense.

The company said on Tuesday it had told federal, South Australian and local authorities it had decided to scrap the $200m project to deepwater drill in the Great Australian Bight Marine Park.

Rapid climate change forced urgent upgrade of ‘failsafe’ doomsday storage facility

The Arctic global seed vault has reached the milestone of having 1m varieties stored in its deep freeze. The new deposits are being made after unexpected flooding of its entrance tunnel in 2017 prompted an upgrade.

Seeds from 60,000 crop varieties from across the world are being placed in the vault to back up those held in other seed banks.