The Guardian

Propping up Australia’s largest coal-fired power station could deter investments in renewable energy or batteries. And might other operators now coming begging?

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The New South Wales government has bought itself an insurance policy worth as much as $450m to keep open a power station it couldn’t afford to have exit the grid.

But operating the 2880-megawatt Eraring plant up to four years beyond its scheduled August 2025 closure date will cost more than just the price of corporate welfare – there’s also the environmental and economic impacts to quantify.

The loss of the ecosystems, which are vast stores of carbon, would ‘be disastrous for nature and people across the globe’, says IUCN

Half of all the world’s mangrove forests are at risk of collapse, according to the first-ever expert assessment of these crucial ecosystems and carbon stores.

Human behaviour is the primary cause of their decline, according to the analysis by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with mangroves in southern India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives most at risk.

Peter Dutton unveils an unusual housing policy

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Projections of the size and scale of a future CCS industry should come with heavy doses of scepticism

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As far as bonanzas go, a claim this week that Australia could pull in almost $600bn by storing carbon dioxide from other countries is one that puts even the Aukus nuclear submarine deal in the shade.

The oil and gas industry lobby group Australian Energy Producers made the claim, reported in the Australian, pointing to a study carried out by global energy analysts Wood Mackenzie.

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Five nature reserves will be created each year for next five years to celebrate coronation of King Charles

A temperate rainforest in the Lake District has been declared a national nature reserve in a move that will protect the rare ancient habitat for future generations.

The Borrowdale rainforest is one of the few surviving examples of a “mysterious and untouched” landscape that covers less than 1% of the UK.

The No Mow May campaign has persuaded local authorities to protect biodiversity. But bigger changes are needed

This time last year, residents of the council estate where I live in Greenwich were left in tears after local authority contractors mowed down scores of newly planted purple alliums on our shared lawn just days after they’d bloomed. In minutes, one man with a strimmer had reduced the flowers that my neighbours, many of whom do not have private gardens, had grown over months to mere mulch.

Shamefaced, this year the council sought to make amends by sowing a biodiversity meadow near where the alliums had met their fate. The new wildflowers were doing well – on track to compensate for the previous year’s blunder – until, to the consternation of residents, they were yet again mown down by council contractors. Even the local authorities’ own efforts to improve the biodiversity of the borough proved no match for its trigger-happy lawnmower men.

Phineas Harper is a writer and curator

Winter downpours also made 20% wetter and will occur every three years without urgent carbon cuts, experts warn

The seemingly “never-ending” rain last autumn and winter in the UK and Ireland was made 10 times more likely and 20% wetter by human-caused global heating, a study has found.

More than a dozen storms battered the region in quick succession between October and March, which was the second-wettest such period in nearly two centuries of records. The downpour led to severe floods, at least 20 deaths, severe damage to homes and infrastructure, power blackouts, travel cancellations, and heavy losses of crops and livestock.

Photographer Gideon Mendel has filmed and photographed floods around the world extensively. He travelled by boat through the historic town centre of Port Alegre, documenting the reflections across a city that had become a liquid landscape

The New Zealand Department of Conservation has released vision of a man appearing to attempt to 'body slam' an Orca, describing the behaviour as 'shocking and stupid'. The 50-year-old Auckland man has been fined $600. Hayden Loper, a principal investigator at the department, says the man showed reckless disregard for his own safety and that of the orca. “The video speaks for itself, it is shocking and absolutely idiotic behaviour."

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• New Zealand man filmed trying to ‘body slam’ an orca in actions described as ‘idiotic’

Ministers are discussing who will build the plant, which will join Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C as major future suppliers to the grid

Ministers have earmarked north Wales as the site of a large-scale nuclear power plant, which is part of plans to resuscitate Britain’s nuclear power ambitions.

Wylfa on Anglesey (Ynys Môn) has been named as the preferred site for the UK’s third major nuclear power plant in a generation, coming after EDF’s Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, which is under construction in Somerset, and its Sizewell C nuclear project planned for Suffolk.

High temperatures in Mexico have been linked to dozens and perhaps hundreds of deaths of howler monkeys

It’s so hot in Mexico that howler monkeys are falling dead from the trees.

At least 83 of the midsize primates, who are known for their roaring vocal calls, were found dead in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. Others were rescued by residents, including five that were rushed to a local veterinarian who battled to save them.

Wealthy states must cut emissions faster than their developing peers, court says, in major step for climate justice

Greenhouse gases are pollutants that are wrecking the marine environment, and states have a legal responsibility to control them, an international court has stated in a landmark moment for climate justice.

Wealthy nations must cut their emissions faster than their developing peers, the court also decided.

Prospective partners on Farmer Wants a Wife are asked to give up their lives to support the farm – watching from home, I wonder why they would say yes

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A few episodes into the current season of Farmer Wants a Wife, one of the contestants, Farmer Dean, abandons his uteload of prospective love interests at the gate to walk across the red loam soil to check his watermelon crop. Watching from my couch in Cowra, I had two realisations.

The first was that Dean – who left the season halfway through – was probably a “real” farmer, unlike some the show has put up before. The second was that good farmers make less-than-ideal husbands.

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Report finds nuclear energy more expensive than renewable alternatives and calculates costs for large-scale reactors for first time

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Electricity from nuclear power in Australia would be at least 50% more expensive than solar and wind, according to a report from the CSIRO that has for the first time calculated costs for large-scale reactors.

The federal Coalition, which has claimed nuclear would provide cheap electricity, is still to reveal any details on its nuclear policy after initially promising it would make an announcement in time for last week’s federal budget.

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Case alleges French company’s exploitation of fossil fuel contributed to deaths of victims in extreme weather disasters

A criminal case has been filed against the CEO and directors of the French oil company TotalEnergies, alleging its fossil fuel exploitation has contributed to the deaths of victims of climate-fuelled extreme weather disasters.

The case was filed in Paris by eight people harmed by extreme weather, and three NGOs. The plaintiffs believe it to be the first such criminal case filed against the individuals running a major oil company. The public prosecutor who received the file has three months to decide whether to open a judicial investigation or dismiss the complaint.

Move reflects wider state of politics around active travel – arguing around the margins and doing little to change lives for better

In the six days since a law to prosecute dangerous cyclists was announced, somewhere close to 30 people will have been killed on UK roads, none of them struck by bikes. About 500 more will have suffered serious, potentially life-changing injuries, with pretty much all connected to motor vehicles.

Again, going on the statistical averages, over those same six days, slightly more than 1,600 people across the UK will have died due to illnesses associated with physical inactivity. Riding a bike cuts your likelihood of developing such conditions by about half.

‘Catastrophic’ global decline due to dams, mining, diverting water and pollution threatens humans and ecosystems, study warns

Migratory fish populations have crashed by more than 80% since 1970, new findings show.

Populations are declining in all regions of the world, but it is happening fastest in South America and the Caribbean, where abundance of these species has dropped by 91% over the past 50 years.

It’s likely the urban pest first emerged from its native lands about 1,200 years ago. As global trade accelerated, the hitchhikers made their way more rapidly around the world

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German cockroaches thrive in buildings all over the world. They’re one of the most common cockroach species, causing trouble for people both here and overseas. But in nature, they’re nowhere to be found.

Just how this urban pest evolved and populated our dwellings was unknown – until now.

‘Critical slowing down’ of recovery raises concern over forest’s resilience to ecosystem collapse

More than a third of the Amazon rainforest is struggling to recover from drought, according to a new study that warns of a “critical slowing down” of this globally important ecosystem.

The signs of weakening resilience raise concerns that the world’s greatest tropical forest – and biggest terrestrial carbon sink – is degrading towards a point of no return.

Vulnerable birds deviating from migratory routes by up to 155 miles, which could affect breeding

Eagles that have migratory routes through Ukraine have shifted their flight paths to avoid areas affected by the conflict, researchers have found.

GPS data has revealed that greater spotted eagles not only made large detours after the invasion began, but also curtailed pitstops to rest and refuel, or avoided making them altogether.