Environment

Jeremy Corbyn to make pledge as part of party’s ‘green industrial revolution’

Labour have announced plans to fit solar panels to 1.75m homes lived in by socially housed or low-income households as part of its promised “green industrial revolution” to try to combat climate change and boost jobs.

The programme is due to be announced by Jeremy Corbyn and the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, at an event in Yorkshire on Thursday.

Last week the Mauna Loa Observatory observed the highest levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ever documented

Donald Trump’s interior secretary hasn’t “lost sleep over”, the record-breaking levels of pollution heating the planet, he told US lawmakers in an oversight hearing.

The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii observed carbon dioxide levels of 415 parts per million in the atmosphere on Friday – the highest ever documented.

Deb Haaland, one of the first Native American women elected to Congress, has become a powerful voice for US public lands

While she was campaigning for a seat in the US Congress last year, Deb Haaland went camping for four days. It was less a surprisingly timed vacation and more a return home.

Her destination was notable: Utah’s Bears Ears national monument, which Donald Trump controversially downsized in 2017 as part of a bid to encourage resource extraction. She wanted to experience “a living landscape” where the art and artifacts of her people, the indigenous Pueblo, are still abundant. She spent the trip hiking in and out of steep canyons and marveled at the area’s famed Moon House, a cliff dwelling and storage facility that dates back 800 years.

Antonio Guterres hears from leaders at Fiji summit who warn region is facing ‘an unprecedented global catastrophe’

Governments around the world must introduce carbon taxes, halt plans for new coal plants and accelerate the closure of existing ones if damage to the Pacific from climate change is to be limited, the UN secretary general has told Pacific leaders on his first visit to the region.

Antonio Guterres met leaders of Pacific countries in Fiji, on a trip that will also see him visit Vanuatu, considered one of the countries most vulnerable to natural disasters due to climate change, and Tuvalu, which is at risk of sinking under rising waters.

Exclusive: Movement creates 1,280 new groups to boost numbers in deprived areas

Cubs and scouts are marching back into inner cities and have formed 1,280 new packs, troops and colonies in the most deprived parts of Britain over the past five years.

The 112-year-old Scout movement has boosted membership in some of the UK’s poorest areas by 20,000 since 2014, according to figures published on Wednesday. New sections have opened on estates such as Byker in Newcastle and Wythenshawe in south Manchester but also in non-urban areas of deprivation such as Jaywick, an Essex seaside town named among the poorest in Britain.

"I will be damned if the same politicians who refused to act then are going to try to come back today and say we need to find a middle-of-the-road approach to save our lives," the congresswoman said.

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Scalloped hammerheads were at the Nausicaá aquarium in the French port of Boulogne, near Calais

Thirty hammerhead sharks captured on the Great Barrier Reef and exported to a French aquarium over an eight-year period have all died in captivity and the Australian government says it knows nothing about it.

The deaths, which are the subject of legal action by Sea Shepherd France, could put a spotlight on the trade of threatened sharks caught in Australian waters because of a federal law that allows them to continue to be commercially fished.

International Maritime Organization aims to halve global emissions by 2050

This week is the 74th meeting of the marine environmental protection committee of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and it represents one of the best hopes of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from a large and growing sector.

The beloved science educator and children’s show host appeared on Last Week Tonight to help explain carbon-pricing

Bill Nye is done messing around. Look out, because while you might not typically associate angry talk with the normally-mild-mannered “Science Guy” Nye, when it comes to the threat of global climate change, he has – understandably, perhaps – lost his patience. And how.

The beloved science educator and television personality, best known for his children’s program Bill Nye the Science Guy, appeared on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Sunday in a segment on the plan to fight climate change, and started throwing the F-word about – a lot. (The plan is sponsored by the US House of Representatives’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the longtime environmental advocate and Senator Ed Markey, and is known as the Green New Deal.)

The verdict represents the third time a California jury has decided in favor of consumers who claimed their cancer was caused by the glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer.

(Image credit: Haven Daley/AP)

Agency had one afternoon to accept government’s approval of Adani groundwater plan, emails reveal

Environment groups and the Greens have called for the winner of Saturday’s election to review the Adani mine decision, after it emerged pressure was put on the CSIRO to accept the government’s approval of the mine’s groundwater plans.

The ABC reported on Tuesday that emails it obtained under freedom-of-information laws revealed the agency had a single afternoon to accept the federal government’s approval of Adani’s groundwater management plan.

A retired naval officer dove in a submarine nearly 36,000ft into the deepest place on Earth, only to find what appears to be plastic

On the deepest dive ever made by a human inside a submarine, a Texas investor found something he could have found in the gutter of nearly any street in the world: litter.

Victor Vescovo, a retired naval officer, made the unsettling discovery as he descended nearly 35,853ft (10,927 meters) to a point in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench that is the deepest place on Earth, his expedition said in a statement on Monday. His dive went 52ft (16 meters) lower than the previous deepest descent in the trench in 1960.

Greenpeace supporters abseil off bridge unfurling banners calling on political parties to declare a ‘climate emergency’

Thirteen people have been arrested after environmental activists abseiled off the Sydney Harbour Bridge to demand action on climate change.

The Greenpeace supporters launched themselves from a public walkway on the western side of the structure at dawn on Tuesday, calling on the major federal political parties to declare a “climate emergency”.

Florida's experience with Hurricane Michael shows how difficult it is to accurately forecast a hurricane's intensity. Forecasters say more accurate forecasts are coming soon.

(Image credit: Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images)

To be certified, a business must operate according to three principles of sustainability: people, planet and profit. B Corp wineries are investing in farmworkers, but some say it's still not enough.

(Image credit: Christopher Grava/Courtesy of Lubanzi Wines)

Exclusive: if Trump Tower and other sites do not cut emissions, Trump Organization will owe $2.1m a year from 2030

Donald Trump’s reluctance to address climate change is set to cost his business empire millions of dollars in fines levied by New York City due to the amount of pollution emitted by Trump-owned buildings.

Related: Could climate change submerge Joe Biden's presidential bid?

Scott Morrison says government took reef ‘off the endangered list’ – despite no such list existing

Scott Morrison has credited his government as having “saved” the Great Barrier Reef, a claim rejected as “ridiculous” by scientists, environment groups and the Queensland government.

At the Liberal party’s campaign launch in Melbourne on Sunday, Morrison thanked past environment ministers Greg Hunt and Josh Frydenberg for their work on reef issues.

Morrison government accused of failing to take action to reduce emissions or pursue adaptation measures

A group of Torres Strait Islanders from low-lying islands off the northern coast of Australia will on Monday lodge a complaint with the United Nations human rights committee against the Australian government, alleging climate inaction.

The complaint will assert that the Morrison government has failed to take adequate action to reduce emissions or pursue proper adaptation measures on the islands and, as a consequence, has failed fundamental human rights obligations to Torres Strait Islander people.

Proposal calls for wilderness protection as startup space miners look to the stars

Great swathes of the solar system should be preserved as official “space wilderness” to protect planets, moons and other heavenly bodies from rampant mining and other forms of industrial exploitation, scientists say.

The proposal calls for more than 85% of the solar system to be placed off-limits to human development, leaving little more than an eighth for space firms to mine for precious metals, minerals and other valuable materials.

It's not too late to make a difference. NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with Andrew Deutz of The Nature Conservancy about the U.N. extinction report and what can be done to reverse the damage.