The Guardian

Porous dams in Purbeck are being used to ‘rewet’ the mires, bringing a richer landscape for flora and fauna

Leaky dams may not sound ideal but they are being used to great effect on dried-out marshland in the English West Country to produce fresh habitat for carnivorous plants and a spider that whizzes over the surface of water to grab prey.

Bales made out of heather and bunds constructed out of peaty soil and timber are being used to create porous dams on two mires, Agglestone and Greenlands, in Purbeck, Dorset.

BMW X3 has biggest gap between manufacturer’s laboratory consumption claims and real-world testing in latest Australian Automobile Association data

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Cars driven in Australia consume up to 20% more petrol than manufacturers are claiming, according to a program that tests “real-world” on-road fuel efficiency with laboratory calculations.

The Australian Automobile Association (AAA) testing – funded by the federal government – also found four of the 13 vehicles tested in its latest round of compliance checks exceeded regulatory limits for oxides of nitrogen or carbon monoxide.

Sultan Al Jaber, an oil executive, calls for governments to be ‘honest’ about costs involved in transition to net zero

The problem of the ever-growing demand for power must be addressed if the world is not to risk descending into “energy turmoil” as it transitions towards clean energy, according to the president of last year’s Cop28 summit.

In a discussion hosted by the International Energy Agency, Sultan Al Jaber warned governments that they must be “honest and transparent” about the potential costs of transition, and the trade-offs involved in transforming energy supplies.

Exclusive: Environment Protection Authority says building debris discovered in a sample of recycled mulch, ‘which is not permitted’

• Testing regime meant to stop toxic chemicals going into NSW landscape products gamed by suppliers
• Asbestos mulch locations: map and full list of sites where it has been found
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The environment watchdog says recycled mulch at the centre of New South Wales’ contamination crisis has been found to contain “construction and demolition waste” in contravention of state rules – as well as asbestos.

The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) found the waste alongside asbestos when testing mulch it said was produced by Greenlife Resource Recovery and used at the Prospect Highway upgrade in Blacktown, Guardian Australia can reveal.

Sunak becomes first PM to address conference since Gordon Brown in 2008, as Tories court farming sector

Rishi Sunak has told farmers “I have your back”, at the National Farmers Union conference, as he promised to “change the culture” in government around farming.

Sunak was the first prime minister to address the NFU conference since Gordon Brown in 2008, and took three Defra ministers with him to put the Conservative case to farmers.

Federal tests of one-third of water systems find 70 million Americans exposed to PFAS – suggesting 200 million affected overall

About 70 million people are exposed to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in US drinking water, new testing from the Environmental Protection Agency has found.

But the testing completed to date has only checked about one-third of the nation’s public water systems, meaning the agency is on pace to find over 200 million people are exposed, or at least 60% of the US population.

Friends of the Earth dismisses government’s revised climate action plan as a ‘pipe dream’

UK ministers are facing court for a second time over plans to meet legally binding climate targets, after environmental groups branded revised measures “a complete pipe dream”.

The government has already been forced to change its climate action plan after a legal challenge by environmentalists, but the same groups are taking it back to court over updated plans they say are “riddled with holes and relian[t] on risky techno-fixes”.

Carbon budgets that add up, proper protection for Britain’s land and sea, and replacing GDP with a wellbeing index

• Our writers and experts name the pledges Labour must include in its manifesto

I’m as likely to be selected for the national gymnastics team. But bear with me awhile, to imagine that, like David Cameron, I’m about to be wafted by the UK’s fairytale political system from my garden shed to the benches of the House of Lords, to become Labour’s shadow environment secretary. Here are the three big policies I would try to insert into the party’s manifesto.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Voters have made their position clear but our politicians are still not talking about how we can change the way we live and work to ease the climate crisis

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The last federal election was less than two years ago but the caravan moves on quickly. With politics dominated by cost-of-living concerns and daily distractions, it’s easy to forget the central role that dissatisfaction with the Coalition’s inaction and doublespeak on the climate crisis played in the result.

It wasn’t the only factor, but an in-depth study found it was the biggest issue in driving voters away from the major parties to independents. It was the second biggest in motivating people who changed their vote to Labor. It stands to reason it was at least as important in the Greens increasing their support and seat count.

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Exclusive: FOI request reveals fears many would sell up if they saw assessment of post-Brexit farming payments scheme

Government officials have buried an analysis of the financial prospects for some of the most vulnerable farmers in the UK after realising it was almost entirely bad news, the Guardian can reveal.

The analysis was to have been part of an optimistic look at the financial situation for upland farmers, some of the poorest in the country, but minutes from meetings about the plans obtained through a freedom of information request have revealed concerns were raised about the negative findings.

One official commented: “Could end up with no pathways to success at the end. We only want to publish if we have something which is positive to tell people.”

Government officials admitted that upland farmers were falling into financial crisis and may go out of business.

Officials feared that when upland farmers saw the data showing how much money they would make they would sell up.

Officials believed upland farmers were dismissive of the environment.

Agricultural sector hit by post-Brexit turmoil with protests over trade deals, environmental legislation and rising costs

Rishi Sunak will promise farmers the “largest ever” grant scheme tomorrow, as well as the creation of a food security index, after criticism that Brexit trade deals and poor responses to flooding and rising costs have put England’s ability to feed itself at risk.

Against a backdrop of turmoil in the agricultural sector, with farmers in the UK and across the continent causing havoc with tractor protests against environmental regulations and a perceived lack of support, Sunak will respond to farmers’ calls for a commitment from government that the UK’s food self-sufficiency will remain at or exceed the current estimated level, which is about 60%.

US research shows foods such as butter and processed meat likely to increase levels of toxic PFAS in blood over time

Diets rich in foods such as processed meat and butter likely increase levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in human blood over time, new peer-reviewed research has found.

The paper identified a range of foods to be among the drivers of high PFAS levels, including teas, pork, candy, sports drinks, processed meat, butter, chips and bottled water. The research also pointed to higher PFAS blood levels among those who consumed more carryout or food prepared at restaurants.

I was looking forward to a magnificently white winter, with school closures and an otherworldly hush. The weather had other ideas

I was excited to experience a Boston winter – being in snow country was a genuine attraction of our trip here – and last week looked set to deliver. The headlines were threatening me with a good time (“predicted to be heaviest snowfall in two years” and pre-emptive school closures ran in ticker tape across the TV screen). Cars started sporting snowplough attachments, and the yoga teacher ended class not with namaste but with an ominous: “Good luck with the storm.”

My husband and I were giddy as toddlers. Would there be six inches of snow? Twelve? “When I wake up at 4am,” my husband said gleefully, studying his weather app, “it should already be white.” At the shop he asked, in all seriousness, if we should buy a sledge “before they all sell out”.

Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist

System that brought heavy rains and strong winds to Northern Territory due to arrive in Western Australia

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) issued severe warnings across Northern Australia over the weekend due to a tropical cyclone called Lincoln. Making landfall on Friday afternoon as a category one Cyclone, Lincoln maintained its strength into the evening before being downgraded to a tropical low or ex-tropical cyclone (Ex-TC). By Saturday morning, 202mm of rain had fallen over 24 hours at Centre Island, located to the north-east of Borroloola and nearby to where Lincoln made landfall.

The Ex-TC then slowly tracked westwards across the Northern Territory as it brought heavy rainfall and damaging wind gusts to a series of districts. Warnings of flash flooding were issued by the BOM for a series of northern districts in the Northern Territory, with rainfall totals of 60-100mm forecast to fall within a six-hour period; 80-140mm expected over the 24-hour period. Tennant Creek, located in the west of the Barkly district, recorded 138.4mm of rain within 24 hours by Sunday morning.

Warning that soaring number of vessels threaten fish stocks and environment as geopolitics prevents agreement to regulate area

The scale of unregulated fishing in a disputed region close to the Falkland Islands has reached an “overwhelming” level that is threatening fish populations and the rich biodiversity of the area, politicians and environmentalists have claimed.

The “Blue Hole”, a stretch of the south Atlantic Ocean lying approximately 200 miles off the coast of Argentina and north of the Falkland Islands, is one of the only areas of sea that is not covered by a regional fishing agreement.

We need international gatherings if we are to find a common language to resist environmental destruction

In the autumn of 1945, the Scotsman newspaper reported excitedly on an ambitious project to establish Edinburgh as a world centre for music and drama. It would host the first great postwar international art assembly in Europe, with a mission to celebrate the “flowering of the human spirit”. Two years later, the Edinburgh international festival was born.

Seven decades on, that flowering might sometimes appear overabundant. Scotland alone has 18 book festivals this year, while the Association of Festival Organisers, which is currently updating a survey from 2022, estimates that, despite a ripple of post-Covid closures, there will as many as 900 music jamborees across the UK. Faced with the double whammy of shrinking incomes and vanishing subsidies, prices have risen and audiences have aged, while organisers face an annual scramble to fill gaping holes in their budgets that yawn wider the more brave and imaginative they are. Meanwhile, the search for alternative sources of funding, either from business or from overseas, has been repeatedly complicated by ethical issues.

At Native Cat Flat in Victoria’s Alpine national park, four fenced-off areas show a strikingly different ecology,  highlighting the damage wrought by more than 2,700 feral horses in the area. Behind the fences, lush sphagnum, dense vegetation, grass tussocks, shrubs and herbs thrive. Outside the plots, the ground is pockmarked with deep hoofprints, and the native grasses are overgrazed, exposing endangered animals in the area — which rely on dense vegetation — to predators

• ‘Feral horses don’t know state borders’: the push to protect Victoria’s Alpine national park

British producers to back EU’s proposed regulations to stop trade in adulterated honey

Britain’s beekeepers are backing ­proposed new rules to combat fraud in the supply chain, ensuring a jar of honey can be traced on its journey of up to 5,000 miles from the beehive to the shop shelf.

The European parliament has agreed new labelling rules and a project to establish a traceability system for honey from harvesting to the consumer. The proposed rules are part of an overhaul of the “breakfast directives”, including the honey directive.

Vast reforestation a major reason for ‘warming hole’ across parts of US where temperatures have flatlined or cooled

Trees provide innumerable benefits to the world, from food to shelter to oxygen, but researchers have now found their dramatic rebound in the eastern US has delivered a further, stunning feat – the curtailing of the soaring temperatures caused by the climate crisis.

While the US, like the rest of the world, has heated up since industrial times due to the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have long been puzzled by a so-called “warming hole” over parts of the US south-east where temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled, despite the unmistakable broader warming trend.