The Guardian

UK programme will offer 118 young people from ethnic minority backgrounds environment roles

A group of leading environmental organisations are taking part in an employment initiative to make the green movement more diverse.

Friends of the Earth, Client Earth, the RSPB and others will take part in a programme that aims to open up the environmental sector to young people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Under 3,000 pairs survive, which each require 7 ha to prosper, with ex-industrial sites ideal for breeding

The willow tit, one of Britain’s smallest and most endangered birds, requires a surprisingly large area of wild land to thrive, according to research.

Less than 3,000 pairs of the bird survive, mainly on brownfield sites in former coal mining areas, making it the fastest declining resident species, with numbers plummeting by 94% since 1970.

Cross-party committee says deprived groups contribute least but suffer most from dirty air

The government must set tough new air pollution targets to reduce the stark health inequalities suffered by disadvantaged communities, a cross-party committee of MPs has said.

Dirty air causes up to 64,000 early deaths a year in the UK, according to their report, and disproportionately harms those living in deprived areas and those from minority ethnic communities. The fact that these groups contribute the least to air pollution “increases the moral case for action”, said the MPs.

Smart, activist states could prove as effective at handling the biodiversity crisis as they have at tackling the pandemic

Let’s be honest: few government-commissioned reports make a real difference. Often ministers call on an expert to look into a contentious issue in the hope of kicking it into the long grass, and when a weighty tome duly arrives with uncomfortable recommendations, it is quietly ignored.

It is easy to see how the review into the economics of biodiversity by the Cambridge University academic Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta could be one of those that gathers dust in the Treasury, because it has a tough message. Put simply, Dasgupta says humanity – all 7.8 billion of us – is on a collision course with the planet. Our current economic system is unsustainable and endangers the prosperity of current and future generations.

Politicians would have us believe we can achieve net zero by just doing the easy things – or that some sectors can be excused

Right now the government is utterly hamstrung on the issue of climate change. After more than a decade of obstruction and doing the least possible, the rest of the world is changing fast and the debate in Australia needs to get real.

As Katharine Murphy put it so well on Tuesday, the government has no real climate change policy to speak of, but they do have a hell of a lot of fighting over pretending that there is.

Meeting Paris goals would bring health benefits aside from tackling global heating, research says

Thousands of lives lost to air pollution, inactivity and unhealthy diets could be saved each year if the UK takes the action needed to tackle climate change, researchers have said.

Across the world, millions of lives could be saved if countries raise ambitions on cutting emissions to limit global heating to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, as they have committed to in the global Paris climate accord.

95% of £1.5bn set aside to improve houses unspent due to slowness in making grants and paying installers

The government is apparently withdrawing hundreds of millions of pounds from the green homes grant programme, a move condemned by the renewable energy industry as an alarming failure of its plan for a green recovery.

Ninety-five per cent of the £1.5bn pot provided for householders in England to make their homes less carbon intensive remains unspent due to long delays in giving out grants to householders and making payments to installers.

Riders in major cities, especially New York, encounter particle quantities well above safe levels

People traveling on subway systems in major US cities are being exposed to unsafe amounts of air pollution, with commuters in New York and New Jersey subjected to the highest levels of pollution, research has found.

Tiny airborne particles, probably thrown up by train brakes or the friction between train wheels and rails, are rife in the 71 underground stations sampled by researchers during morning and evening rush hours in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington DC, the cities that contain the bulk of subway systems in the US.

Najin and Fatu are the only two rhinos of their species in existence. Jack Davison visited Ol Pejeta in Kenya to document a story that transcends tragedy

Underwater photographer of the year, a global annual competition based in the UK, celebrates photography beneath the surface of the ocean, lakes, rivers and even swimming pools

Soil Association announces largest year-on-year increase in sales of natural products in 15 years

Organic food consumption has soared in the past year across the UK, as people have eaten in more and sought higher quality food, driving the biggest year-on-year increase in sales in 15 years.

The organic market, including food, clothing, cosmetics and other products, increased to £2.79bn, a rise of 12.6% on 2019, according to the Soil Association in its annual organic market report, released on Wednesday.

Standoff exposes tensions between large Inuit organizations with power to approve permits and residents of small communities

A group of Inuit hunters have braved nearly a week of freezing temperatures to blockade a remote iron mine in northern Canada, in protest over an expansion plan they say will harm local wildlife.

The blockade, which has prompted solidarity rallies in other Nunavut communities, has also exposed growing tensions between large Inuit organizations with the power to approve development permits – and residents of the small communities where the impact of such projects is felt.

The M7 was supposed to be offset by environmental protection 15 years ago. Leaked documents show that never happened

Western Sydney has seen some of the most intensive urban development in Australia in the past 20 years – and what’s known as “conservation offsets” have been used as a bargaining chip to make this rapid construction of new residential suburbs and infrastructure more palatable to the public.

But an investigation by Guardian Australia has found at least two instances where the offsets never eventuated, in one case 20 years after they were first proposed.

Planning proposal for project near Whitehaven faces widespread opposition from environmentalists

Cumbria county council has said it will reconsider the planning application for a new coalmine near Whitehaven, which has prompted widespread criticism.

Government ministers in January declined to intervene in the go-ahead for the mine on the basis it was a local decision, but environmental campaigners have warned it undermines UK efforts to tackle climate change.

Highbury Corner tunnel built by same crew behind HS2 protest tunnel at Euston, say environmentalists

A second tunnel or tunnel network has been occupied by tree protectors in central London in protest at plans by Islington council to fell a range of mature trees to make way for new housing.

Activists from a group called Save The Trees are occupying the site, which is close to a busy roundabout in a polluted part of London.

Shift is caused by the heating of the oceans and other wildlife is suffering more attacks

The climate crisis is pushing great white sharks into new waters where they are causing populations of endangered wildlife to plunge, research has shown.

Heating of the oceans, which reached a record level in 2020, has led young great white sharks to move 600km (373 miles) northwards off the coast of California since 2014, into waters that were previously too cold. Over that time there was a dramatic rise in sea otters killed by white sharks, with the number in Monterey Bay dropping by 86%.

A second tunnel or tunnel network has been occupied by activists in London in a protest against plans by Islington council to fell a range of mature trees.

Activists say the tunnel at Highbury Corner tree protection camp was built by the crew that dug the tunnel at the Euston Square Gardens HS2 protection camp.

• Activists occupy second London tunnel in protest at tree-felling plans
  

Pollution from power plants, vehicles and other sources accounted for one in five of all deaths that year, more detailed analysis reveals

Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found.

Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower.

Climate action wreckers who used to rant about real things – carbon pricing, a national energy guarantee – are spouting about policies that don’t even exist

Given Australian politics has transited back to climate change, stupid isn’t really a shock. Stupid is the default.

But even though stupid is to be expected – and stupid always gets supercharged when the Coalition fuses its climate change “debates” with internal leadership tension – I’m still gobsmacked that somehow, over the past 72 hours, we have managed to move to somewhere even dumber. Let me explain what I mean by this.

Oil projects over the next decade would destroy hopes of meeting Paris climate goals, thinktank warns

The world’s state-owned fossil fuel companies are poised to invest about $1.9tn (£1.4tn) in the next decade in projects that would destroy any prospect of meeting the Paris agreement climate goals.

A large proportion of these investments are likely to become stranded assets, with at least $400bn unlikely to be profitable if the world sticks to its promises to hold global heating to less than 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels, according to a report from the Natural Resource Governance Institute thinktank.