Environment

Exclusive: Campaigners say funding may provide incentive to restart fracking if moratorium is lifted

Fracking companies are likely to be eligible for tax breaks, potentially worth billions, that the government is extending to oil and gas companies to encourage new exploration of fossil fuel resources.

Combined with high gas prices, the extra funding – which amounts to a subsidy, according to campaigners – could provide a strong incentive to restart fracking operations if a moratorium in the UK is lifted, which could happen as early as this week.

Nairobi biodiversity talks end in stalemate, prompting open letter to world leaders calling for action before Montreal conference

UN biodiversity negotiations have reached crisis point due to a lack of engagement from governments, leading NGOs have warned, three years after experts revealed that Earth’s life-support systems are collapsing.

Last week, countries met in Nairobi for an extra round of talks on an agreement to halt the human-driven destruction of the natural world, with the final targets set to be agreed at Cop15 in Montreal. Governments have never met a target they have set for themselves on halting the destruction of nature despite scientists warning in 2019 that one million species face extinction, and that nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history.

A new book dives deep into the fascinating criminal world of tree theft and efforts to combat it.

(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Activists horrified by decision to give green light to stage three of the New Hope Group’s controversial mine

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Queensland has granted environmental approval to a controversial plan to expand an open-cut coalmine near Toowoomba and extend its life for another 12 years, in a move anti-coal campaigners say should be met “with horror”.

Stage three of New Hope Group’s New Acland open cut coalmine was given the green light on Tuesday by the state’s department of environment and science.

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Professor says link to extreme weather sometimes overestimated but climate costs underestimated

Climate change is to blame for the majority of the heatwaves being recorded around the planet but the relation to other extreme events and their impacts on society is less clear, according to a study.

“I think on the one hand we overestimate climate change because it’s now quite common that every time an extreme event happens, there is a big assumption that climate change is playing a big role, which is not always the case,” said Friederike Otto, a climate change and environment professor at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, who was one of the lead authors of the research.

Some major fireworks displays are canceled again this year — some over wildfire concerns amid dry weather and others because of enduring pandemic-related staffing and supply chain issues.

(Image credit: Julie Jacobson/AP)

‘It’s the wrong policy debate at the wrong time,’ industry says of capacity mechanism

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Australia’s peak renewable industry groups say paying coal and gas plants to remain in the electricity market as back-up capacity would be “a retrograde step”, and a lengthy debate about changes could stall much-needed new investment.

Kane Thornton, the chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said his organisation had “real concerns” about the proposal by the Energy Security Board for a so-called capacity mechanism to be introduced after 2025. Such a scheme would charge consumers for idle generation or supply to reduce risks of potential power shortages, as experienced across eastern Australia this month.

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Scientists warn that while total number of cyclones may be decreasing, global heating will see a higher proportion of more damaging storms

Global heating has coincided with fewer tropical cyclones forming each year around the globe compared with the second half of the 19th century, according to a new study.

The average annual number of cyclones fell by 13% across the 20th century, with steeper declines seen after 1950.

Former military heads warn of risks to food supply ahead of report from Australian Security Leaders Climate Group

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Australia is badly prepared for food insecurity fuelled by the climate crisis and war, former military leaders have warned.

A new report, to be released on Tuesday, describes Australia and the Asia-Pacific as a “disaster alley” for climate change, but says governments in Canberra have not properly planned for the impact of “cascading and compound events”.

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Weather officials announce the earliest end to the country's annual summer rainy season since the Japan Meteorological Agency began keeping records in 1951.

(Image credit: Yusuke Ogata/AP)

After becoming extinct in the wild, European bison were reintroduced to Poland in 1954 and Romania in 2012. Photographer Alexander Turner went in search of Europe’s largest land mammal with rangers from Foundation Conservation Carpathia

Environment minister receives enthusiastic welcome in Lisbon and flags five blue carbon projects to safeguard ocean health

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Australia’s new environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has received an enthusiastic welcome in Lisbon at the UN ocean conference after flagging five new blue carbon projects and declaring that “under the new Australian government, the environment is back – front and centre”.

Plibersek opened her contribution at the conference by telling delegates: “For those of you who don’t follow Australian politics very closely, we’ve just had an election, there’s a new government, the whole world has changed.”

Direct action group starts week of ‘disruption’ to ‘resist climate destruction’ as NSW police pledge crackdown

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A woman who locked herself to the steering wheel of her car and blocked the harbour tunnel is one of 11 climate protesters arrested in Sydney.

The protesters were among a group of 50 to 60 activists who kicked off a week of disruption in Sydney with a march through the city centre on Monday.

Penalties for peaceful action are now the same as for aggravated assault

Last Friday dozens of armed New South Wales police officers raided a camp near Sydney and arrested two environmentalists. One was Aunty Caroline Kirk, an Aboriginal elder. She was charged with “wilfully obstructing and intimidating police”.

“I can’t run, I can’t climb,” she said. “All I can do … is teach my culture. Why are they doing this?”

Spanish city becomes first in the world to adopt measure as periods of hot weather become more frequent

The southern Spanish city of Seville is to become the first in the world to name and classify heatwaves – much in the way that tropical storms or hurricanes are named – in an effort to better shield residents as periods of excessively hot weather become more frequent.

The year-long pilot project in one of Spain’s hottest cities will classify heatwaves into three categories and named from a list that include Xenia and Wenceslao.

From Montana’s prairies to Kazakhstan’s steppes, vast tracts of land are being enriched. Here’s how to witness those changes

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Mozambique’s civil war (1977-1992) and the poaching connected to it decimated wildlife in Gorongosa national park. Since 2006, the Gorongosa restoration project has set out to bring back nature, starting with buffalo, wildebeest, eland, zebra and other animals being trucked in.

19-year-old activist warns world faces ‘total natural catastrophe’ unless citizens take urgent action

Greta Thunberg has warned that the world faces “total natural catastrophe” unless citizens take urgent action as she made a surprise appearance at Glastonbury festival.

The 19-year-old activist led chants of “climate … justice” after delivering a rousing speech from the Pyramid stage which painted an apocalyptic picture of the future of the planet.

Demands include end to fossil fuels, preservation of biodiversity and greater social justice

About 3,500 protesters have gathered in Munich as the G7 group of leading economic powers prepare to hold their annual gathering in the Bavarian Alps in Germany, which holds the rotating presidency this year.

Police said earlier that they were expecting a crowd of about 20,000, but initially fewer people showed up for the main protest, which started at midday on Saturday, the German news agency dpa reported.

Control zone had been enforced around a pig farm near Feltwell after possible case reported

Officials have ruled out a suspected case of foot and mouth disease in Norfolk.

Movement restrictions and a temporary six-mile (10km) control zone for animals were enforced around a pig farm near Feltwell in west Norfolk, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Nearly 100 birds are being ‘headstarted’ to boost numbers as species vanishes from lowland England

An evocative peeping echoes across a large, sunny aviary. The distinctive call of the curlew comes from dozens of chicks, who strut through long grass squabbling over a much-prized worm.

The scruffy-looking chicks with the beautiful voices may be the best hope for the endangered species, whose numbers have halved in the past 25 years as it vanishes from lowland England.