The Guardian

Corbyn commits to 37 new windfarms in green industrial revolution election push

Jeremy Corbyn will unveil plans to create another 70,000 jobs in offshore windfarms part-owned by the public as his party gears up for an election manifesto focusing on a green industrial revolution.

The Labour leader will visit a windfarm on Wednesday as he launches his commitment to a further 37 offshore windfarms.

Culls cause badgers to roam further, potentially worsening risk of disease in cattle

Badgers start to roam much further afield when culling starts nearby, research has found, potentially increasing the spread of bovine tuberculosis, the disease culling is meant to control.

The findings raise questions about the government’s culling strategy, begun in 2011 and intended to reduce the harm to dairy herds from a rising incidence of bovine TB in hotspots around the country. Last month the government announced a major extension.

After being fined for blocking oil refinery traffic, Daniel Hooper, once the public face of green activism, applauds new generation

More than two decades after Britain saw its first widespread environmental protests, Extinction Rebellion is the latest in the vanguard.

But while campaign groups have come and gone, it’s business as usual for Daniel Hooper, the veteran eco-warrior known as Swampy who says the latest protests give him “hope”.

Civil liberties groups say bail conditions imposed on Sydney climate change activists are usually reserved for bikie gang members

Climate change protestors arrested for obstructing traffic have been given “absurd” bail conditions that ban them from “going near” or contacting members of Extinction Rebellion, in what civil liberties groups say infringes on freedom of political communication.

On Monday, 30 people – including former federal Greens senator Scott Ludlam – were arrested in Sydney while calling for government action on the climate emergency.

Growing up being constantly reminded that water is finite and rain is unreliable is in the back of my mind wherever I go

An urban legend went around town during the peak of a drought when I was a child.

The story was someone had pulled up their floor during a home renovation and discovered an old newspaper clipping predicting the drought and the date it would finally break. Depending on who was telling the story, it was someone’s neighbour, their cousin or their grandmother who had found the century-old article.

Major environment groups, including the Australian Conservation Foundation and Greenpeace, back XR protests

The head of one of Australia’s largest environment groups has warned Extinction Rebellion protesters they could be creating division on environmental issues at a time when “cool heads” are needed.

Lyndon Schneiders, national campaigns director for the Wilderness Society and a veteran activist, told Guardian Australia he hoped the XR campaign would not hand more power to the fossil fuel lobby by causing further polarisation.

Arrests made under section 14 order as officers in Whitehall begin removing tents

Police have begun attempting to clear Extinction Rebellion protest camps from around Westminster as they imposed a section 14 order banning demonstrations across central London.

Arrests were made under the order from early on Tuesday morning, beginning at the movement’s westernmost encampments on Millbank and moving into Whitehall in the late afternoon, where hundreds of tents had been pitched outside Downing Street.

The humpback appears to have arrived just in time to join the Extinction Rebellion protests. And to highlight how these mighty mammals could help us fight climate change

Reports of an apparently healthy-looking young humpback in the Thames suggests that it is not only humans who are intent on an environmental uprising. As the founding emblem of the modern green movements, it seems apt that this leviathan appears just in time to join this week’s Extinction Rebellion demonstrations.

Not only that, but in what may be the biggest goodwill gesture yet from the largest animals on our benighted planet, the whales may be about to help us out. If we give them the chance. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released a report detailing how great whales could sequester billions of tonnes of climate-threatening carbon from the atmosphere.

A slipper-shod Lord Fraser emerges from his Westminster home to berate climate campaigners

A Tory peer has confronted Extinction Rebellion protesters in his dressing gown as they marched past his home in central London.

Andrew Fraser, who was made a life peer by David Cameron in 2016, emerged from his Westminster home on Lord North Street on Tuesday morning. He was pictured wearing a white dressing gown and slippers as he confronted protesters, who were were banging drums and waving banners as part of the second day of Extinction Rebellion’s planned two-week shutdown of the heart of the capital. While the nature of the exchange between the peer and the protesters is unknown, one activist did try to hand him a flyer.

Boris Johnson’s description of XR protesters is met with anger and disgust at Whitehall campsite

Boris Johnson described protesters from Extinction Rebellion on Monday night as “uncooperative crusties” occupying “heaving hemp bivouacs” on the streets of Westminster.

At the Extinction Rebellion protest site on Trafalgar Square on Tuesday morning, Nicola Hargreaves snorted as she considered the prime minister’s remarks. “I’m a solicitor,” she said. “And I’m dressed in clothes from Whistles that I’m pretty sure don’t have any hemp in them at all. So Boris can shove his comments up his arse.”

The RSB has released the shortlisted entries for their 2019 photographer of the year and young photographer of the year competition. The photos showcase stunning images captured across the globe, including Canada, India and Kenya, and feature a variety of species in motion, with fluttering birds, jumping insects and territorial showdowns.

The winners of the competition will be announced at the RSB annual awards ceremony on 10 October at the Francis Crick Institute in London as part of this year’s Biology Week.

Welcome to our monthly roundup of the biggest issues in farming and food production, with must-read reports from around the web

Hundreds of Dutch farmers have been protesting against calls to curtail nitrogen emissions from the farming sector. The government is being urged by MPs and NGOs to come up with a more radical plan for reducing emissions, including halving the country’s livestock population. WWF has previously called for a 40% cut in cow numbers in the Netherlands, saying the sector had outgrown its ability to safely dispose of its waste. Meanwhile, outgoing EU agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan has said farmers should be paid to cut carbon emissions.

The EU is to impose hen welfare standards on egg imports from Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay under the new EU-Mercosur trade agreement. It is the first time the elimination of tariffs have been conditional upon particular animal welfare standards being upheld.

The US is eliminating production line speed limits at pig slaughterhouses despite fears it will worsen the already high number of serious injuries suffered by US meat plant workers. Amputations, fractured fingers, second-degree burns and head trauma are just some of the serious injuries suffered by US meat plant workers every week, according to an investigation last year by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The climate action protest group, Extinction Rebellion, has continued its protests for a second day running. In Sydney, protesters dressed as bees "swarmed" Sydney's Hyde Park to demand "our leaders take strong action on climate change so that we have a future in farming in this country". In Brisbane, an activist who suspended himself from Story Bridge in a hammock has ended his protest after six hours, despite saying he could have hung out for days.  In Melbourne, protesters disrupted traffic and blocked tram lines . Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews defended people's right to protest, but said: "I don't know that shutting the city down necessarily wins you many friends". 

Even with immediate cuts to carbon emissions, scientists expect sea level rise of 30cm-60cm by 2100, exposing millions of people to flooding

Region’s first conference on the trade hears of growing demand for live and dead animals from world’s most biodiverse continent

The illegal wildlife trade is increasing all across Latin America, the first high-level conference on the issue in the Americas was told.

After drugs, guns and human trafficking, wildlife trafficking is the world’s most lucrative organised crime with an annual value of around $20bn (£16bn) each year, according to a 2016 report by Interpol and the UN environment programme.

Protests take place in Melbourne, Brisbane and other Australian cities to kick off a week of activity by Extinction Rebellion

Four teenage girls are among dozens of protesters demanding government action on climate change to be arrested in Sydney on Monday.

The Extinction Rebellion climate protests movement has planned a “spring rebellion” from Monday to Sunday, including marches aimed at blocking traffic.

Environment officials are unsure whether the poisoning of the birds in northeast Victoria was an accident

An insecticide is likely to be behind the deaths of almost 200 native birds in northeast Victoria, environment officials believe.

After dead wedge-tailed eagles were found near Violet Town in August the state’s environment department found more – along with hawks and falcons – on a nearby property.

Environmental activists plan to blockade roads in the centre of government for two weeks

Environmental activists from around Britain are set to swoop on Westminster on Monday morning in an attempt to “shut down” the heart of government with two weeks of disruptive protests.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) said its members are planning to blockade “every single road” into the central London district and plan to maintain the protests for at least 14 days, or until their demands are met.

Indigenous tribes see the Catholic church as a key ally in the ecological fight – and an unprecedented synod is focused on how to stop the destruction

A hundred years ago the Harakmbut people were nearly wiped out.

Inhabitants of a vast jungle region where Peru intersects with Brazil and Bolivia, the tribespeople were enslaved by rubber barons and murdered en masse, only surviving thanks to the help of Dominican missionaries.

In effort to restore marsupial’s population, 30 released into Mallee Cliffs national park inside predator-free enclosure

Bilbies have been reintroduced to the Mallee Cliffs national park in the far south-west of New South Wales in an effort to restore populations of the marsupial, which is regionally extinct in the state.

Greater bilbies haven’t been seen in the national park for more than a century.