The Guardian

Wettest March day for 15 years in some parts of northern Australian state, while storms and hail hit Mediterranean

More heavy rain has hit Queensland, Australia, just weeks after the devastation of Cyclone Alfred. Much of north and central Queensland was put under severe weather alert for heavy rainfall earlier this week, as six-hourly rainfall totals of 30-60mm were anticipated, with the risk of seeing up to 120mm locally in this period.

In the north-west of the state, this rain caused the Haughton River to rise rapidly, with water levels reaching 2.68 metres on Wednesday night, exceeding the 2.5-metre major flood level.

Heavy rainfall expected to stretch from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast to the Victorian border, with the potential for isolated falls of up to 100mm

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A wet and wild weekend is on the way for much of Australia, as heavy rain in Queensland moves east and a tropical low off the coast of Western Australia threatens to develop into a cyclone.

Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra can all expect a washout on Saturday, with heavy rainfall expected to stretch from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast down to the Victorian border, including the potential for isolated falls of up to 100mm.

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Bloc set to accept compromise that would allow companies to trade carbon credits, in blow to climate finance

The long-awaited carbon levy on international shipping that was to supply vital climate finance looks set to be significantly diluted, after the EU appeared to be backing down in global talks, in a blow to vulnerable countries.

The EU is set to accept a compromise that would allow companies to enter into a system of trading carbon credits instead of paying directly for their emissions, the Guardian has learned.

Ministers urged to do more after United Utilities discharged raw sewage into Unesco site for 6,327 hours last year

Celebrated by William Wordsworth, Windermere has long epitomised the natural timeless beauty of the Lake District, with millions of tourists drawn to the shores that inspired the poet. But today England’s biggest lake is a shadow of its 19th century self: its waters no longer clear but blighted by algae and its wildlife decimated by pollution, in a symbol, critics say, of all that is wrong with the privatised water industry.

This month the environment secretary, Steve Reed, vowed to break with the recent past, standing on its shores and promising that Labour would “clean up Windermere”. The lake is showing the impact of sewage pollution from United Utilities treatment plants and increased pressure from climate change-induced temperature rises.

Less use of gas and coal in electricity supply and industry sectors drove reduction, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero says

The UK’s carbon emissions fell by 4% last year, according to official figures.

Provisional statistics published on Thursday by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) show UK territorial greenhouse gas emissions were 371m tonnes carbon equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2024, down from 385 MtCO2e in 2023.

Exclusive: Cost blow-out has experts worried people will use ‘huge’ volumes of pesticides to protect themselves from ‘tiny killers’

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Australian households will spend $1.03bn every year to suppress fire ants and cover related medical and veterinary costs, with about 570,800 people needing medical attention and 30 likely deaths from the invasive pest’s stings, new modelling shows.

The Australia Institute research breaks down the impact of red imported fire ants (Rifa) by electorate, with the seats of Durack and O’Connor in Western Australia, Mayo in South Australia and Blair in Queensland the hardest hit if the ants become endemic.

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Blair: $1.7m in medical costs, $1.5m in vet costs and $5.1m in household pesticide costs.

Dickson: $1.4m in medical costs, $1.2m in vet costs and $4m in household pesticide costs.

Ryan: $1.5m in medical costs, $1.3m in vet costs and $3.4m in household pesticide costs.

Many winemakers halt shipments on chance White House makes good on threat of 200% markup on European goods

As the threat of exorbitant US tariffs on European alcohol imports looms, a warehouse in the French port city of Le Havre awaits a delivery of more than 1,000 cases of wine from a dozen boutique wineries across the country.

Under normal circumstances, Randall Bush, the founder of Loci Wine in Chicago, would have already arranged with his European partners to gather these wines in Le Havre, the last stop before they are loaded into containers and shipped across the Atlantic. But these wines won’t be arriving stateside anytime soon.

As life starts to return to the capital’s parks and woodlands, photographer Sarah Lee has been capturing daffodils and budding plants, walkers, buskers and joggers out in the sunshine. She says: ‘Everything feels so dark right now, it’s good to know the light is coming back’

Net zero is a target that countries should be striving for to stop the climate crisis. But beyond the buzzword, it is a complex scientific concept – and if we get it wrong, the planet will keep heating.

Biodiversity and environment reporter Patrick Greenfield explains how a loophole in the 2015 Paris climate agreement allows countries to cheat their net zero targets through creative accounting, and how scientists want us to fix it

Gene Likens, who first identified acidic rainwater in 1960s, said the Trump administration’s ‘rollbacks are alarming’

The US could be plunged back into an era of toxic acid rain, an environmental problem thought to have been solved decades ago, due to the Donald Trump administration’s rollback of pollution protections, the scientist who discovered the existence of acid rain in North America has warned.

A blitzkrieg launched by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on clean air and water regulations could revert the US to a time when cities were routinely shrouded in smog and even help usher back acid rain, according to Gene Likens, whose experiments helped identify acidic rainwater in the 1960s.

Final gathering in April will mark end of street protests although campaign to continue ‘in courts and prisons’

Supporters of the climate group Just Stop Oil have announced that, after three years of disruptive protests, they are ending their campaign of civil resistance.

Hannah Hunt, whose speech on Valentine’s Day 2022 marked the beginning of the campaign, made the announcement outside Downing Street in London on Thursday.

Duration of spills by water companies up on previous year, in data described by environment secretary as ‘disgraceful’

Raw sewage was discharged into rivers and coastal waters in England for almost 4m hours last year, with waterways that have the highest environmental protections subjected to days of pollution.

Data released by the Environment Agency on Thursday revealed water companies discharged untreated effluent for 3.62m hours, a slight increase on last year.

It doesn’t pass the sniff test

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Sweeping synthesis of 2,000 global studies leaves no doubt about scale of problem and role of humans, say experts

Humans are driving biodiversity loss among all species across the planet, according to a synthesis of more than 2,000 studies.

The exhaustive global analysis leaves no doubt about the devastating impact humans are having on Earth, according to researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) and the University of Zurich. The study – which accounted for nearly 100,000 sites across all continents – found that human activities had resulted in “unprecedented effects on biodiversity”, according to the paper, published in Nature.

Critics say industry threatens the endangered Maugean skate and laws were rushed through with ’no proper process’

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Controversial legislation to protect the Tasmanian salmon industry has passed parliament after the government guillotined debate to bring on a vote in the Senate on Wednesday night.

Government and Coalition senators voted in favour of the bill, which was designed to bring an end to a formal reconsideration by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, into whether an expansion of fish farming in Macquarie harbour in 2012 was properly approved.

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Third of global GDP could be lost this century if climate crisis runs unchecked, says report

Taking strong action to tackle the climate crisis will increase countries’ economic growth, rather than damage their finances as critics of net zero policies have claimed, research from the world’s economic watchdog has found.

Setting ambitious targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and setting out the policies to achieve them, would result in a net gain to global GDP by the end of the next decade, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in a joint report with the UN Development Programme.

People living near Kasungu national park say they are living in fear after translocation of 263 elephants by International Fund for Animal Welfare

People living on the edge of a protected area in Malawi are taking legal action against an NGO that moved more than 250 elephants into the area, which they say have killed at least 10 people.

Villagers near Kasungu national park, which is Malawi’s second largest and crosses the Zambian border, say they are living in fear for their livelihoods and safety after 263 elephants were introduced in July 2022, causing a sharp spike in human-wildlife conflict. Ten people claiming to be affected by the translocation from Liwonde national park have begun legal action against the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), demanding that the conservation NGO construct adequate fencing to protect the 167 villages around the park and compensate local people for the damage caused by the elephants.

Slow-moving trough drags tropical moisture inland, dumping widespread heavy rain onto an already saturated landscape, Bureau of Meteorology says

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Heavy rainfall has closed nearly 200 roads and cut off multiple towns in Queensland as already saturated rivers risk more flooding.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather warning for heavy rainfall across normally dry inland areas of central west Queensland, including parts of the Northern Goldfields and Upper Flinders, North West, Channel Country, and Maranoa and Warrego districts.

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The government appears willing to put the future of an entire unique Australian species at risk at the behest of one industry. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling

The anger I have witnessed over the past few days within the environment and climate movement has been extraordinary.

I have spent the past four days in emergency meetings with leaders across the environment movement furiously responding to Anthony Albanese’s latest attack on nature.

UN-backed research has found emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane coming from Glencore's Hail Creek coalmine are probably between three and eight times higher than officially reported. Two aircraft with different types of monitoring equipment and flying at different altitudes looked for plumes of methane coming from the coalmine in Queensland's Bowen Basin – a site highlighted in a previous study as a major emitter. Glencore has challenged the results, saying in a statement it had 'significant doubts' about the research, claiming it used 'out of date' data

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• Methane emissions from Queensland mine may be gross underestimates, UN research finds