The Guardian

Exclusive: energy secretary says 2050 target is imperative, and accuses opposition of betraying of future generations

The government is “absolutely up for the fight” over net zero, Ed Miliband has said, as he accused the Conservatives and Reform of “a total desertion and betrayal” of future generations by failing to tackle the climate crisis.

After a turbulent week for Labour in which it has been charged with abandoning its values by slashing disability benefits, the energy secretary sought to focus attention on the party’s plans for the green energy transition.

Western Forest will cover 2,500 hectares across Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Bristol

A new Western Forest is to be created across a swathe of the west of England from the Cotswolds to the Mendips, the government has said.

The project, one of the government’s promised national forests, will create 2,500 hectares (6,200 acres) of woodland by 2030 across five priority areas in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Bristol, with plans to plant 20m trees by 2050.

Unesco report highlights ‘unprecedented’ glacier loss driven by climate crisis, threatening ecosystems, agriculture and water sources

Retreating glaciers threaten the food and water supply of 2 billion people around the world, the UN has warned, as current “unprecedented” rates of melting will have unpredictable consequences.

Two-thirds of all irrigated agriculture in the world is likely to be affected in some way by receding glaciers and dwindling snowfall in mountain regions, driven by the climate crisis, according to a Unesco report.

Exclusive: Representatives of king, National Trust and others called on to work together to protect environment

Steve Reed called in some of England’s biggest landowners for a meeting on Thursday, asking them to come up with meaningful plans to restore nature on their estates.

Representatives for King Charles and Prince William were among those at the meeting, asked by the environment secretary to draft new land management plans to help meet the country’s legal Environment Act targets.

Campaigners condemn North Dakota jury’s ruling as Greenpeace must pay Energy Transfer at least $660m

• Never miss global breaking news. Download our free app to keep up with key stories in real time.

The verdict against the environmental group Greenpeace finding it liable for huge damages to a pipeline company over protests has been described by advocacy groups as a “weaponization of the legal system” and an “assault” on free speech and protest rights.

A North Dakota jury decided on Wednesday that Greenpeace will have to pay at least $660m to the pipeline company Energy Transfer and is liable for defamation and other claims over protests in the state in 2016-2017.

Members of public accounts committee raise concerns about culture and call for greater examination

• Business live – latest updates

Nuclear whistleblowers who try to draw attention to cultural and safety issues face bullying, MPs have warned.

Members of parliament’s public accounts committee have said they are concerned about the way people who raise concerns about culture and safety on nuclear sites are treated.

Conservationists voice concern that the Ontario theme park will struggle to find suitable homes for its animals

Canada’s embattled Marineland theme park is to raise money to “expeditiously” remove animals from its grounds, including the world’s largest captive beluga population, as it looks for a buyer. But a lack of available sanctuaries in the country suggests finding a home for stranded whales, dolphins and pinnipeds will be a daunting task.

In February, the park won approval to divide its sprawling property so it can take out mortgages on separate parcels, with the aim of using the funds to keep the park operating and to move the animals. In documents filed to the city of Niagara, Marineland said the financing it had secured “requires the owner to remove the marine animals from the property expeditiously”.

Office for Environmental Protection says targets for water quality likely to be missed, and clarifying rules may help

The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) watchdog has launched an investigation into the UK government over potential failures to clean up England’s rivers under EU-derived laws.

The OEP published a report last year saying that plans to clean up waterways were too generic and did not address specific issues at individual sites. It said plans were being put in place despite low government confidence that their objectives could be achieved.

As droughts become more prevalent, corporate control over our drinking water is threatening the health of water sources and the access people have to them. Josh Toussaint-Strauss explores how foreign multinational companies are extracting billions of litres of water from natural aquifers to sell back to the same communities from which it came – for huge profits

• ‘It’s not drought - it’s looting’: the Spanish villages where people are forced to buy back their own drinking water

• Foreign firms taking billions of litres from UK aquifers to make bottled water

The run-up to 2016 shows ‘common sense’ isn’t enough. Even ignorant, reactionary arguments must be properly countered

Kemi Badenoch’s speech on climate this week was not interesting of itself: she said net zero couldn’t be achieved by 2050 “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”. She has no expertise in climate science, no background in renewables or apparent familiarity with the advances made in their technology, no qualification in economics – just about the only bit of that sentence she knows anything about is bankrupting us.

Yet even if Badenoch can take its particulars and shove them, the fact of its existence is interesting for a number of reasons. First, this attack on net zero has been predicted, not secretly by new-Conservative fellow travellers, though conceivably them too, but by progressives – and for years. Among the first was the Cambridge academic David Runciman, who predicted a backlash against action on the climate crisis as the new galvanising issue on the radical right after it had moved on from Brexit. On his Talking Politics podcast, he was in conversation with Ed Miliband, who took that point but said he hoped Runciman was wrong. He was not wrong.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Researchers cite £2.4bn annual cost of flooding and say a third of England’s critical infrastructure is at risk

Spending on flood defences will fall off a cliff edge next year, a report warns, calling on the chancellor to commit at least £1.5bn a year in the spending review to protect the economy and the public.

Nearly 2 million people across the UK are exposed to flooding every year, which is equivalent to the combined populations of Birmingham, Sheffield and Newcastle upon Tyne.

The verdict in North Dakota state court came after two days of deliberations in a trial where company Energy Transfer accused Greenpeace of defamation and orchestrating criminal behaviour to disrupt the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. The project is located near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation. Deepa Padmanabha, Greenpeace’s senior legal adviser, said Greenpeace will appeal the decision.

• Greenpeace must pay at least $660m over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury

Scotland’s first minister says Grangemouth could become world leader in green fuels

There is a realistic chance that one of the UK’s largest oil refineries can be converted into a hub for green chemicals, sustainable fuels and plastics, according to Scotland’s first minister.

Grangemouth oil refinery, which is being shut down by its UK and Chinese owners PetroIneos this year with the loss of 400 jobs, could become a world leader in low carbon chemicals and green fuels, John Swinney told media on Wednesday.

Increased cost of the fossil fuel has also cut forecasts of how much gas will be needed in Australia’s southern states

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

High gas prices and a shift towards running homes and businesses on electricity has helped delay an expected gas shortage in Australia’s southern states until 2028, a government agency says.

A report by the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) said the increased cost of the fossil fuel and trend towards electrification had combined with mild winters to reduce gas use.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Thousands sign petition to save ‘vital’ Dartington Estate project that teaches agroforestry methods

Even at this time of year when most of the trees are still bare, there is a feeling of abundance in Martin Crawford’s forest garden, close to the banks of the River Dart in Devon.

Crawford, who has nurtured this landmark garden for three decades, is clearly in his element, pointing out the edible plants that flourish in the tangly two-acre patch, stooping from time to time to pick a leaf or green shoot and take a nibble.

Litter such as crisp packets and bottle tops are polluting the coast at the rate of nearly two items a sq metre, conservation charity report finds

Single-use plastic waste increased on UK and Channel Island beaches last year with items such as crisp packets and bottle tops polluting the coast at the rate of almost two items a sq metre, according to data from beach cleanups.

The amount of plastic waste collected on beaches rose by 9.5% in 2024, compared with 2023, and more than three-quarters of a million pieces of waste were picked up by volunteers, according to evidence from the State of our Beaches report by the Marine Conservation Society.

I drove 2,000 miles with a French friend across my home country – and saw the endless nowhere land that is the crucible of Trumpism

In 1941 Dorothy Thompson, an American journalist who reported from Germany in the lead-up to the second world war, wrote an essay for Harper’s about the personality types most likely to be attracted to Nazism, headlined “Who Goes Nazi?” “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t – whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi,” Thompson wrote.

Talia Lavin, a US writer, recently gave Thompson’s idea an update on Substack with an essay of her own: “Who Goes Maga?”

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe correspondent

The potential layoffs listed in documents reviewed by Democrats are part of the White House'’s broader push to shrink the federal government

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to eliminate its scientific research office and could fire more than 1,000 scientists and other employees who help provide the scientific foundation for rules safeguarding human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants.

As many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists – 75% of the research programme’s staff – could be laid off, according to documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the house committee on science, space and technology.

Commission launched in 2022 says lagoon project, not full barrage, should be backed by UK and Welsh governments

Urgent action is needed to harness the UK’s potential for tidal range energy in the Severn estuary but smaller lagoon models should be pursued over a larger dam-like barrage, a panel of experts has said.

The Severn Estuary Commission said that harnessing the energy of the tides in the estuary could deliver predictable, renewable electricity that would work independent of weather conditions.

Floods, heatwaves and supercharged hurricanes occurred in hottest climate human society has ever experienced

The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.

The WMO’s report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008.