The Guardian

Activists say plan to remove 200 felines near Old San Juan fortress within six months is not enough time and worry cats will be killed

A non-profit organization said Thursday that it sued the US National Park Service over a plan to remove Puerto Rico’s famous stray cats from a historic district in the US territory.

The lawsuit filed by Maryland-based Alley Cat Allies comes four months after the federal agency announced it would contract an animal welfare organization to remove an estimated 200 cats that live in an area surrounding a historic seaside fortress in Old San Juan.

World’s fossil-fuel producers on track to nearly quadruple output from newly approved projects by decade’s end, report finds

The world’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to blow apart agreed climate goals, a new report has found.

There can be no new oil and gas infrastructure if the planet is to avoid careering past 1.5C (2.7F) of global heating, above pre-industrial times, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has previously stated. Breaching this warming threshold, agreed to by governments in the Paris climate agreement, will see ever worsening effects such as heatwaves, floods, drought and more, scientists have warned.

The World Nature Photography award winners have been announced from a pool of entries from all corners of the globe – including a baby elephant in Kenya and an owl-like plant in Thailand. The top award and cash prize of $1,000 went to Tracey Lund from the UK for her image of two gannets under the water off the coast of the Shetland Islands. Lund and her fellow winners were drawn from thousands of images

Environment minister Tanya Plibersek’s reforms are running so late there’s speculation the government will weaken them at the expense of the environment

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

After less than two years in power, the Albanese government is showing signs of getting comfortable. Consultation, transparency and coherent policy appear to be out. Cosiness with powerful stakeholders and policy on-the-run appear to be in.

Parliament is now debating amendments to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act, which, if passed, could carve out oil and gas approvals from Australia’s environmental law.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Global adoption of diet low in meat would aid health, land and food systems as well as reducing emissions, researchers say

A global shift to a mostly plant-based “flexitarian” diet could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help restrict global heating to 1.5C, a new study shows.

Previous research has warned how emissions from food alone at current rates will propel the world past this key international target.

Government asked to put ‘people and planet before profits’ as analysis shows potential illegal discharging of raw sewage

• How polluted is your local river and which regions are worst hit?

Regulators face pressure to act after further evidence of potentially illegal activity by water companies has been revealed.

Analysis of the latest data shows that more than 2,000 overflows owned by a number of companies are discharging raw sewage into rivers and seas at a scale that should spark an immediate investigation into illegal breaches of permit conditions.

UN Food Waste Index report says food wastage is major contributor to climate crisis

More than a billion meals are thrown away every day, in poor countries as well as rich ones, despite more than 730m people living in hunger around the world.

About a fifth of food around the world is wasted, sometimes through profligacy or poor planning, sometimes from a lack of access to refrigeration or storage, according to the UN Food Waste Index Report, published on Wednesday, at a global cost of about $1tn a year.

Boats had been barred from landing since July 2022 owing to virus, which has ravaged populations of seabirds

The puffins started arriving two weeks ago – and now there are thousands of them fizzing around in a mad frenzy. They have joined kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars and shags. Soon Arctic terns will arrive after their epic journey across the world from the Antarctic.

This week humans arrived after a two-year ban from the Farne Islands in Northumberland, one of the UK’s most important sanctuaries for breeding seabirds.

Call for environmental emergency to be declared after data reveals 105% rise in raw sewage discharges over past 12 months

Water companies in England have faced a barrage of criticism as data revealed raw sewage was discharged for more than 3.6m hours into rivers and seas last year in a 105% increase on the previous 12 months.

The scale of the discharges of untreated waste made 2023 the worst year for storm water pollution. Early data seen by the Guardian put the scale of discharges at more than 4m hours, but officials said the figures were an early estimate.

IFRC and USAid staging conference to draw attention to risks and share best practice in disaster alerts and response

Two of the world’s biggest aid agencies will host an inaugural global summit on extreme heat on Thursday as directors warn that the climate crisis is dramatically increasing the probability of a mass-fatality heat disaster.

The conference will highlight some of the pioneering work being done, from tree-planting projects to the development of reflective roof coverings that reduce indoor temperatures.

Some ‘ecologically sound’ brands contain as little as 2.7% of the eco-friendly paper alternative

In the bathrooms of the ecologically conscious, bamboo toilet paper is the new bottom line – a supposedly green alternative to the bog-standard pulp-based loo roll that requires the chopping down of 1m trees a year, just to be flushed down the pan.

But new findings from consumer watchdog Which? will wipe away that smug feeling: samples of three out of the five of the UK’s top bamboo brands were actually made from other woods, some of them heavily implicated in deforestation.

Just 2% of continent’s gas capacity has planned retirement date despite pledges to decarbonise, study shows

Europe’s “tone-deaf” expansion of fossil gas is accelerating climate breakdown and increasing reliance on hostile regimes, campaigners have warned.

Just four of Europe’s gas-fired power plants have a retirement plan and new projects will increase the continent’s gas generation capacity by 27%, according to analysis from the campaign group Beyond Fossil Fuels.

Researchers find carbon offsets approach, which is supposed to regenerate scrubby outback forests, was not reducing emissions as promised

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

Australia’s main carbon offsets method is a failure on a global scale and doing little if anything to help address the climate crisis, according to a major new study.

Research by 11 academics found the most popular technique used to create offsets in Australia, known as “human-induced regeneration” and pledged to regenerate scrubby outback forests, had mostly not improved tree cover as promised between about 2015 and 2022.

Exclusive: Fingers of willow gloves, found in only two woodlands, will be rushed to Cumbria and tied to new trees

Fingers of a critically endangered fungus will this week be removed from its last sites in Scotland and fixed to trees in three woodlands in England to save it from extinction.

Willow gloves, which resembles the fingers of washing-up gloves and grows on dead trees, is found only in two woodlands, and the vast majority is living on just one fallen tree.

Campaigners say activities leading to severe environmental harm usually also violate human rights

The international criminal court (ICC) has been urged to start investigating and prosecuting individuals who harm the environment.

Academics, lawyers and campaigners from around the world have sent expert opinions to the court outlining what they call its current regime of “impunity” for serious environmental crimes.

Although forced to water down its original settings, the revised model will help Australia reach its decarbonisation targets

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

In bringing together a fiercely divided auto industry, the Albanese government appears to have struck a consensus model for a vehicle efficiency standard that will meaningfully bring down emissions – and Australian motorists will reap the rewards.

While the government ultimately had to buckle to industry pressure and water down the preferred settings it had unveiled in February – the most significant concessions being the easing of rules for certain large SUVs and a six-month delay to the credit and penalty system – the fact targets were ambitious to begin with meant that even environmental and electric vehicle bodies back the compromise deal.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Asymptomatic cases may seem reassuring for the penguins, but scientists fear they could act as ‘Trojan horses’ for other species

Adélie penguins in Antarctica are testing positive for bird flu without showing outward signs of disease, according to researchers who travelled around 13 remote breeding sites on an ice-breaking cruise ship.

Since bird flu arrived in the region this year, there have been concerns about the virus reaching the Antarctic’s fragile penguin populations. In November last year, researchers warned in a pre-print research paper that if the virus caused mass mortality in these colonies, “it could signal one of the largest ecological disasters of modern times”.

Plan follows slashing of £28bn green pledge, which Ed Miliband denies having considered resigning over

Labour’s plan for state-backed offshore windfarms will be a “gamechanger”, Keir Starmer has said, as the party seeks to regain the initiative on green policy after the slow-motion ditching of its £28bn investment pledge.

Speaking to broadcasters after a visit to Holyhead port in north Wales alongside Vaughan Gething, the country’s new first minister, Starmer insisted that a transition to sustainable power was still “one of my central missions”.

Riding a bike is not a political act, yet cyclists have become the bete noire for the anti-woke, anti-green, anti-liberal crowd

Getting my bike nicked was like losing a pet. I didn’t want a new one; I wanted to go back in time and not lose my old one. But, in the end, an inanimate object is not infinitely grievable and I need wheels. This is how I fetched up with a Liv bike, my precious first born putting the seat up for me. I said how proud and heart-filled I was, watching him do a little job that I didn’t want to do myself for the first time, and he said: “I’ve been showing you how to use a remote control since I was six years old,” and I thought: OK, fair, but, more to the point, look at my lovely bike.

Freshly re-enamoured of the world of two wheels, I have plunged straight back into the cycling discourse, the perfect microcosm of the wokeness split in all its forms. Take the ex-footballer Joey Barton, who is being sued by Jeremy Vine for calling the broadcaster a “bike nonce”. Meanwhile, the socials are full of people furiously agreeing that aggressive cyclists pose more danger to them than articulated lorries. The fervent attacks on low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and low-emission zones such as Ulez in London are really just a full-throttle loathing of people on bikes, aggrandised by acronyms and libertarian bat signals.

Government has repeatedly used figure to justify more fossil fuel developments despite climate crisis

Are 200,000 jobs really supported by the oil and gas industry in the North Sea? Campaigners and MPs are questioning the longstanding government claim.

Ministers have repeatedly used the 200,000 jobs figure as justification for pushing ahead with more fossil fuel developments despite the escalating climate crisis and widespread opposition from scientists and energy experts.