The Guardian

Anthony Albanese has delivered steady, gradual reform – but a minority government might force Labor to push through bolder solutions

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Australians know the government they elect on 3 May will have to navigate multiple crises.

At home, a cost-of-living crisis is making daily life miserable for millions. Sky-high housing costs are locking younger Australians out of a life their parents took for granted.

The former PM has form when it comes to pushing corporate interests and meeting populists halfway

When Tony Blair came out this week to say current net zero policies were “doomed to fail”, there was something familiar in his arguments: phasing out fossil fuels wouldn’t work because people perceived it as expensive, arduous and not their problem. Stop banging on about renewables; won’t someone think of the things we don’t know how to do, like carbon capture and such wizardry as is still locked in tech bros’ imaginations? Basically, net zero had lost the room, according to the former prime minister. And if anyone knows where the room is, and how to get it back, it must be him.

He said something similar about “woke”, which sadly lost the room in 2022. “Plant Labour’s feet clearly near the centre of gravity of the British people,” Blair advised Starmer. “[They] want fair treatment for all and an end to prejudice, but distrust and dislike the ‘cancel culture’, ‘woke’ mentality.” What exactly does “woke” mean, if not an end to prejudice? Just how effective is cancel culture, if Blair himself could work as a lobbyist for a Saudi oil firm in 2016, advised the government of Kazakhstan after it brutally suppressed public protests in 2011, and yet still walks among us as the voice of the progressive left? Memo to my fellow cancellers: we are bad at this.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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Former PM also sparks Labour fury, with top MP accusing him of ‘handing talking points’ to Tories and Reform

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Climate experts and politicians have criticised Tony Blair for claiming that any strategy that relied on rapidly phasing out fossil fuels was “doomed to fail”.

The former prime minister’s comments, published in a report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), prompted an internal row in Labour, with some accusing him of playing into the hands of a narrative used by rightwing parties to delay climate action.

‘Huge volumes of chicken muck’ entering rivers are harmful to fish and plants, campaigners argue at Cardiff high court

Clean river campaigners have told a court that planning permission for a poultry megafarm in Shropshire is unlawful and should be overturned.

In the high court in Cardiff on Wednesday, Dr Alison Caffyn argued that the council had failed to take into account all the environmental impacts of the industrial chicken units, which will house 230,000 birds at any one time, in particular the effects of spreading manure on land.

Corroboree frog belongs to 100m-year-old family of amphibians but is now found only in the puddles and peat bogs of Kosciuszko national park

Scientists have sequenced the genome of the critically endangered southern corroboree frog – one of Australia’s most threatened amphibians – in hope that the information could be used to aid its recovery.

The striking alpine frog, which has distinctive yellow and black markings, is so threatened by disease and the drying of its habitat due to climate change, that it is considered “functionally extinct”. The species survives in the temporary pools and peat bogs of Kosciuszko national park in New South Wales, with the help of zoo breeding and re-introduction programs.

Annual survey of numberplates from more than 25,000 journeys reveals 63% fall in squashed bugs since 2021

The long-term decline in the number of flying insects being splattered on cars after a journey is well recognised by older drivers. But the latest survey has revealed that the number of insects found on vehicle number plates has plummeted by 63% since 2021.

An analysis of records from more than 25,000 journeys across Britain since 2021 reveals an alarming apparent drop in flying insect abundance, although the rate of decrease slowed in 2024.

Advertising Standards Authority says neither Lavazza UK nor Dualit’s product can be recycled at home

Descriptions of coffee pods as “compostable eco capsules” were misleading as they could not be composted at home, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled.

The ASA has banned adverts by Lavazza UK and Dualit, which both made claims about the eco credentials of their coffee products.

Temperatures south Asians dread each year arrive early as experts talk of ever shorter transition to summer-like heat

The summer conditions south Asian countries dread each year have arrived alarmingly early, and it’s only April. Much of India and Pakistan is already sweltering in heatwave conditions, in what scientists say is fast becoming the “new normal”.

Temperatures in the region typically climb through May, peaking in June before the monsoon brings relief. But this year, the heat has come early. “As far as Asia and the Indian subcontinent are concerned, there was a quick transition from a short window of spring conditions to summer-like heat,” said GP Sharma, the meteorology president of Skymet, India’s leading private forecaster.

Wild weather, elections and rabbit jumping are all part of some of the month’s best images in Australia for April

Plans to protect UK from extreme weather are inadequate, Climate Change Committee says in scathing assessment

Labour is putting people, the economy and the environment in increasing peril by failing to act on the effects of the climate crisis, the UK’s climate watchdog has said.

Flooding, droughts and heatwaves are all increasing in severity due to climate breakdown, but current plans to protect people, land and infrastructure against extreme weather have been judged inadequate in a scathing assessment of the UK’s preparedness.

The scheme, part of policy blitz for local elections, will encourage councils and police forces to work together

Councils will be encouraged to work with police forces to seize and crush vehicles used by fly-tippers, in the latest phase of a government policy blitz before Thursday’s local elections.

Under a scheme being led by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), new legislation will impose jail sentences of up to five years for people who illicitly transport waste in England.

Exclusive: Conservation advocates say assessment shows controversial NT project ‘shouldn’t get past the starting gun’

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Two threatened mammal species could be wiped out at the site of a proposed industrial development on Darwin harbour backed by $1.5bn in federal funding, according to a leaked environmental assessment.

Conservation advocates say it shows the controversial Middle Arm industrial project “shouldn’t get past the starting gun based on impacts to nature”.

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Former PM claims net zero policies losing public support and says there should be greater focus on carbon capture

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Tony Blair has warned that any strategy based on phasing out fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is doomed to fail.

Calling for a reset of action on climate change, the former prime minister suggested the UK government should focus less on renewables and more on technological solutions such as carbon capture.

IET report says running cables below ground about four and a half times more expensive than overhead lines

Labour has vowed to press ahead with its plans to build more pylons across England and Wales, a subject of local political division, as a report says underground electricity cables are more than four times more expensive than overhead lines.

Pylons have become one of the key electoral issues in a number of counties including Lincolnshire, which is a local election battleground this week. Reform and the Conservatives have called for electricity cables to be buried underground rather than carried overhead by pylons.

Researchers have compared the monotreme’s traits with the Kryoryctes cadburyi, an ancient water-dwelling creature that lived in Australia more than 100m years ago

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Australia’s burrowing echidna evolved from a water-dwelling ancestor in an “extremely rare” biological event, scientists said in a new study of the peculiar egg-laying mammals.

With powerful digging claws, protective spikes and highly sensitive beaks, echidnas are well suited to a life shuffling through the forest undergrowth. But a team of Australian and international scientists believe many of the echidna’s unusual traits were first developed millions of years ago when its ancestors splashed through the water.

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While clear weather is expected for much of the country on Saturday, those voting in parts of WA and Queensland may want to bring a raincoat

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Wet and stormy weather is forecast to continue across eastern New South Wales in coming days, but as conditions clear, the state – and much of the country – can look forward to clearer skies on election day.

Persistent showers were due to continue to build across the NSW coast and eastern Victoria on Tuesday and Wednesday. Strong, chilly winds from the south were also forecast, and could whip up large waves along the coast.

Campaigners say targets for woodland creation are unlikely to be met because 95% of grants are for planting

The government is failing to support the natural regeneration of trees in England owing to an overwhelming focus on planting, campaigners have said.

Recent figures show only 5% of Forestry Commission grants for woodland creation have been spent on the natural regeneration of trees, while the remaining 95% is spent on tree planting.

Solar storms as intense as a 1921 superstorm have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario – and we are unprepared

On 14 May 1921, a powerful solar storm – called the New York Railroad storm – caused the northern lights to illuminate New York City’s night sky. On Broadway, crowds lingered, enjoying “flaring skies” that remained undimmed by city lights. The following morning, excess electric currents shut down the New York Central Railroad’s signal and switching system in Manhattan, stopping trains. A fire broke out in a railroad control tower that was located at Park Avenue and 57th Street. Smoke filled the air. Along a stretch of Park Avenue, residents “were coughing and choking from the suffocating vapors which spread for blocks”.

When a solar storm’s electrically charged particles envelop Earth, they cause geomagnetic storms that generate electric fields in the ground, inducing electric currents in power grids. Solar storms as intense as the 1921 superstorm have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario in which modern power grids, communication systems, and other infrastructures collapse for months. Such a collapse of power grids would likely also lead to nuclear power plant accidents, whose radioactive emissions would aggravate the overall catastrophe.

Mark Leyse is a nuclear power safety advocate with a degree in nuclear engineering

These days they call him Ian the renewable energy is expensive potato

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My fear growing up was gun violence. But a bigger threat to my body may have come from an invisible villain

Everyone experiences a moment that shapes who they are – a moment when childhood innocence is lost, and the burdens and traumas of the world become clearer.

For me, that moment occurred in elementary school when my friend discovered a gun in Englewood, New Jersey’s Denning Park. For days, I worried about what might be lurking behind the trees and in the shadows. This anxiety lingered through high school; I even wrote in my local newspaper that “I couldn’t remember anything more frightening for a young girl in elementary school”.