The Guardian

Anna McMorrin says Labour ‘absolutely determined’ on net zero after visiting Antarctica and finding report by her father, a polar researcher

When Anna McMorrin MP visited the Antarctic as part of a government inquiry, she stumbled upon a report in the Rothera Research Station library that her father, a polar researcher, had written in 1962.

It described the Larsen ice shelf, a beautiful stretch of thousands of miles of thick, white, crystalline snow – which has now almost completely melted away.

Dithering on renewable energy and insulation will leave people in Britain ‘colder and poorer’, campaigners warn

Rishi Sunak is facing further attacks on his plans to expand oil and gas exploration in the North Sea this week. The Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill – to be debated in the Commons on Monday – has already triggered widespread protests, including the resignation of Chris Skidmore, a former Conservative energy minister.

The bill aims to boost fossil fuel extraction by establishing a new system under which licences for North Sea oil and gas projects will be awarded annually.

I discovered the Roma Street parkland as a place to run. It’s a wondrous oasis. Tip: there’s quite a bit of my love left on Banyan Lawn

• This is part of a series in which writers tell us about their summers away from the beach
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Maiwar is the heart of Meanjin in summer. It’s running or walking along its banks under the shady canopy of the jacaranda and poinciana trees of the West End, past the vibrant, human-made beach at South Bank, and around the winding, bustling paths at the base of the Kangaroo Point cliffs, where the whiff of mangroves reminds me of their place in the ecosystem, holding the banks in place.

I run at daybreak in summer to beat the humidity, yet beads of sweat still form before I hit my first kilometre. And while anxiety often plagues me, the sky’s reflection in the glassy river offers tranquillity and calm in an otherwise turbulent world.

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With foul rivers and polluted soil, the ‘conserve’ in Conservative clearly does not extend to our natural world

As we sip our pints of wine, clutching our blue passports, we could be forgiven for taking a deep breath when told of the benefits of Brexit. Yet this could become increasingly hard to do, as the promise to maintain or even enhance our environment now that we have left the EU is being broken.

While no campaign bus was ever emblazoned with promises of foul rivers and polluted soil, post-Brexit it is becoming clear that the “conserve” in Conservative doesn’t extend to our natural world. European directives previously accounted for 80% of our laws in this area – creating shared standards we helped write to prevent contamination, reduce emissions and preserve habitats. By working collectively, we could also ensure no country was economically harmed because no border can stop pollution.

Stella Creasy is the Labour and Cooperative MP for Walthamstow

MEPs react to ‘tragic’ findings revealing UK falling behind EU in key environmental policies since Brexit

• Brexit divergence from EU destroying UK’s environmental protections
• Northern Ireland ‘dirty corner of Europe due to lack of governance’
• Explainer: UK environmental protections dropped since Brexit

European lawmakers have lamented the UK’s decision to weaken environmental rules since leaving the EU, after the Guardian revealed it is falling behind in almost every policy area.

One Green group MEP said the findings were “tragic” while a centre-right MEP said the divergences were “particularly bad” for companies that want to do business on both sides of the Channel.

Reef, which extends for 310 miles from Florida to South Carolina and at some points is 68 miles wide, called ‘breathtaking in scale’

Scientists have mapped the largest known deep-sea coral reef, stretching hundreds of miles off the US Atlantic coast.

While researchers have known since the 1960s that coral is present off the Atlantic, the reef’s size remained a mystery until new underwater mapping technology made it possible to construct 3D images of the ocean floor.

Exclusive: Britain is falling behind the bloc on almost every area of green regulation, analysis reveals

• Northern Ireland ‘dirty corner of Europe due to lack of governance’
• Explainer: UK environmental protections dropped since Brexit

Vital legal protections for the environment and human health are being destroyed in post-Brexit departures from European legislation, a detailed analysis by the Guardian reveals.

The UK is falling behind the EU on almost every area of environmental regulation, as the bloc strengthens its legislation while the UK weakens it. In some cases, ministers are removing EU-derived environmental protections from the statute book entirely.

Water in the UK will be dirtier than in the EU.

There will be more pesticides in Britain’s soil.

Companies will be allowed to produce products containing chemicals that the EU has restricted for being dangerous.

EU-derived air pollution laws that will be removed under the retained EU law bill.

Dozens of chemicals banned in the EU are still available for use in the UK.

Thirty-six pesticides banned in the EU have not been outlawed in the UK.

The UK is falling behind on reducing carbon emissions as the EU implements carbon pricing.

The EU is compensating those who are struggling to afford the costs of the green transition, while the UK is not.

The EU is implementing stricter regulations on battery recycling, while the UK is not.

Deforestation is being removed from the EU supply chain, while the UK’s proposed scheme is more lax and does not come in until a year later.

Panel was originally composed of 28 men, a move condemned as ‘regressive’ and ‘shocking’

The president of Azerbaijan has added 11 women to the previously all-male organising committee for the Cop29 global climate summit, which the country will host in December.

The move follows a backlash after the Guardian reported the initial 28-man composition of the committee, which was called “regressive” by the She Changes Climate campaign group. “Climate change affects the whole world, not half of it,” the group said.

The four inhabitants of Morillo de Sampietro, an abandoned village in the Pyrenees, live a simple life

The tiny hamlet of Morillo de Sampietro stands high above a steep, wooded valley in the Spanish Pyrenees. Below is the glint of the Rio Yesa, beyond are the snow-capped peaks of Monte Perdido.

In 1860 Morillo had 76 inhabitants; by 1995 only two remained. Now there are four.

G77 president Pedro Pedroso warns deal risks failing if polluters like UK, US and Canada don’t rethink plans to expand oil and gas

The credibility of the Cop28 agreement to “transition away” from fossil fuels rides on the world’s biggest historical polluters like the US, UK and Canada rethinking current plans to expand oil and gas production, according to the climate negotiator representing 135 developing countries.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Pedro Pedroso, the outgoing president of the G77 plus China bloc of developing countries, warned that the landmark deal made at last year’s climate talks in Dubai risked failing.

Sea Ranger Service will offer the chance to carry out maintenance work and climate research on sailing vessels

A social enterprise has launched offering people between the ages of 18 and 29 the chance to protect the seas around the UK while getting paid.

The Sea Ranger Service (SRS) will offer young people the chance to sail out to sea and undertake vital work to conserve Britain’s oceans.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Populists are taking advantage of agrarian protests sparked by genuine crises – and it all feels horribly familiar

When environmental activists calling for less pollution sit in the streets, across Europe they are now abused and attacked, arrested and handed extreme and draconian sentences. When farmers contesting pollution rules block entire city centres and major roads and spray manure on government buildings, the authorities sit and wait for them to go home. Few, if any, are prosecuted, and those who are receive small penalties. The promise of equality before the law has seldom looked emptier.

The hard right and far right demonise people who challenge the status quo, and valorise those who seek to restore it. Governments and police forces across the rich world have proved all too responsive to their demands.

Open letter says lawmakers must ‘reject fearmongering’ and allow scientists to develop crops that can withstand ‘climate emergency’

The EU must “reject the darkness of anti-science fearmongering” before a key vote on gene editing, 34 Nobel prize winners have said.

In an open letter shared with the Guardian and other European newspapers, the laureates demanded that lawmakers relax strict rules on genetic modification to embrace new techniques that target specific genes and edit their code. The technology could make crops more resistant to disease and more likely to survive extreme weather events that are growing more violent as the planet heats up.

Scientists call for urgent intervention, as bearded pig populations are devastated by the deadly virus on islands such as Borneo

Populations of wild pigs are crashing due to the spread of African swine fever (ASF), threatening the livelihoods of millions who depend on them for food, researchers warn.

With a fatality rate of almost 100%, ASF has swept across Asia, Europe and Africa, devastating domestic and wild pig populations over the past 10 to 20 years. The impacts are especially significant in Borneo, in south-east Asia, where bearded pig numbers have declined by between 90% and 100% since it arrived on the island in 2021, researchers said.

Regulator accused of ‘massaging figures’ by telling staff to pause inspections at poorly performing waste sites until January

The Environment Agency told staff in September to stop inspecting the most poorly performing waste sites until January in order to meet corporate compliance targets, it can be revealed.

The regulator has been accused of “massaging the figures”, with an insider telling the Ends Report and the Guardian that a lack of resources means the body is “failing to do its statutory duty in a timely manner”.

Fishing nets churn up carbon from the sea floor, more than half of which will eventually be released into the atmosphere

Scientists have long known that bottom trawling – the practice of dragging massive nets along the seabed to catch fish – churns up carbon from the sea floor. Now, for the first time, researchers have calculated just how much trawling releases into the atmosphere: 370m tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide a year – an amount, they say, that is “too big to ignore”.

Over the study period, 1996-2020, they estimated the total carbon dioxide released from trawling to the atmosphere to be 8.5 to 9.2bn tonnes. The scientists described trawling as “marine deforestation” that causes “irreparable harm” to the climate, society and wildlife.

The ocean-poisoning superyachts of global plutocrats are a symbol of the class that’s really behind Britain’s misfortunes

Rishi Sunak is in thrall to just two syllables: small boats. Plunging wages, extortionate heating bills, collapsing public services – such trivia does not detain the UK’s first Goldman Sachs prime minister from his Peloton. But small boats crossing the Channel? These he will vow to stop, fulminating in speeches, plastering the words across his lectern as if in a deadly pandemic.

To pull it off, he is yet again this week burning through his dwindling political capital, just like those tech venture capitalists he adores. So he’s declaring Rwanda safe for refugees – which, according to our supreme court, is like claiming black is white – while handing Rwanda hundreds of millions of pounds (its president was yesterday promising a refund). Our chief lawmaker promised this week to break international law and to strip asylum seekers of court protection – or, as he termed it, “the legal merry-go-round”.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

When males die from sex-fuelled exhaustion, still-living members of the species are known to feast on fallen comrades

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If you are exploring our beautiful Australian wilderness this year, keep an eye out for animals behaving in interesting ways. You never know what you might see, as our research team discovered.

In 2023, our colleague from Sunshine Coast council, Elliot Bowerman, took a two-night trip to New England national park – its 1,500-metre-high mountain peaks are some of the loftiest on Australia’s mid-east coast.

Study finds female chrysalises that develop at higher temperatures have fewer eyespots, making them harder to see in dry grass

Female meadow brown butterflies who develop in warmer weather sport fewer spots on their wings, in an unexpected adaptation to global heating.

The discovery was made by University of Exeter scientists who found that females whose chrysalises developed at 11C had six spots on average, while those developing at 15C had just three.