The Guardian

The best of the week’s wildlife pictures, from starfish at Dogger Bank to a sky full of migrating birds in Kashmir to the last moments in the life of a zebra brought down by cheetahs

Governments could be at the start of a slow but huge transformation in how they treat natural life

One of the most important things about this week’s landmark review into the value of nature may appear to be a footling detail: its publisher. The 600-page report was commissioned by the Treasury, headed by Rishi Sunak, rather than the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whose boss is George Eustice. The difference appears to be tiny – the two ministries are a mere 10-minute walk apart – but it represents a huge paradigm shift. For this is the first time any country’s finance ministry has put out a comprehensive study into the economic importance of maintaining a variety of life on Earth. Its author is Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, a Cambridge economist. His argument is both needed and subversive: our economic models and our models for how to run an economy both require urgent overhaul if humanity is to survive and prosper.

For so long, government ministers have treated biodiversity as way down the to-do list, beneath winning the next election and ensuring asset markets and public services are not in meltdown. Plurality and integrity of natural life, of everything from parasites to parakeets, is no more objectionable to a politician than the latest Attenborough documentary. But doing much about it has never seemed a high enough priority.

An auction of offshore plots for future windfarms is being held by the Crown Estate

The Queen’s ownership of the British coastline is as old as the monarchy itself. But her right to collect royalties from wind and wave power is much more recent: it was granted by Tony Blair’s Labour government in a 2004 act of parliament.

The Crown Estate, which manages the royal property portfolio, is holding the first auction of seabed plots for windfarm turbines in a decade. It emerged this week that bidding has reached record highs as energy firms look to diversify away from oil.

Eviction team comes face to face with protesters after digging down shaft near London station

The HS2 eviction team has spent more than 18 hours trying to remove one of the environmental protesters from tunnels dug near Euston station in London.

He is understood to still be “locked on” underground, and there are concerns about his wellbeing.

Male nano-chameleon, named Brookesia nana, has body only 13.5mm long

Scientists say they have discovered a sunflower-seed-sized subspecies of chameleon that may well be the smallest reptile on Earth.

Two of the miniature lizards, one male and one female, were discovered by a German-Madagascan expedition team in northern Madagascar.

Lucrative live shellfish trade also hit hard, with consultation over further restrictions on live animal exports ending soon

Livestock and live shellfish exports from the UK to mainland Europe are at a standstill as producers struggle with post-Brexit transport conditions.

In 2019, excluding lamb and cattle traded between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a combined 31,000 cattle, sheep and goats were exported from the UK to the EU mainland. About 5% would have been exported for fattening for slaughter and the rest for breeding, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) estimates.

National Pig Association (NPA) data shows about 12,000 breeding pigs were shipped from the UK to the EU in 2020. The UK does not export pigs for slaughter, the NPA said, although 1,000 to 2,000 pigs are sent from Great Britain to Northern Ireland each year when extra slaughter capacity is needed.

‘Bizarre’ decision to go ahead with Cumbrian mine criticised as the UK prepares to host vital climate summit

Pressure is growing on the government over its support for a new coalmine in Cumbria, as the UK prepares to host the most important UN climate summit since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015.

Developing country experts, scientists, green campaigners and government advisers are increasingly concerned about the seeming contradiction of ministers backing the new mine – the UK’s first new deep coalmine in three decades, which will produce coking coal, mostly for export, until 2049 – while gathering support from world leaders for a fresh deal on the climate crisis.

Paper does not include policies to make it more affordable to buy EVs or a phase-out date for the sale of new fossil fuel cars

The Morrison government has ruled out subsidies to encourage people to buy electric or hybrid vehicles, and assumes they will be adopted at a pace that would lead to greenhouse gas emissions from transport increasing over the next decade.

A “future fuels strategy” discussion paper released on Friday is largely consistent with a leaked draft in December. It does not include policies to make it more affordable to buy electric vehicles (EVs) or a phase-out date for the sale of new fossil fuel cars, as some other countries have announced.

Work on the Woodhouse Colliery due to begin this year pits climate protection against jobs

Plans for the country’s first deep coalmine in more than 30 years have led to local divisions in Cumbria, even as it becomes an international issue over the country’s climate change commitments.

James Hansen, one of the world’s foremost voices on climate, this week took the unusual step of sending Boris Johnson a strongly worded letter warning that if the mine was allowed to proceed it would lead to “ignominy and humiliation” for the UK.

Major assessment concludes that ocean soundscape is being drowned out by human activity

A natural ocean soundscape is fundamental to healthy marine life but is being drowned out by an increasingly loud cacophony of noise from human activities, according to the first comprehensive assessment of the issue.

The damage caused by noise is as harmful as overfishing, pollution and the climate crisis, the scientists said, but is being dangerously overlooked. The good news, they said, is that noise can be stopped instantly and does not have lingering effects, as the other problems do.

Ministers’ refusal to stop a mine being dug in a marginal seat shows a tension between the environment and ‘levelling up’

Something is stirring deep beneath the earth. Or rather, someone. The veteran eco- warrior Daniel “Swampy” Hooper, alongside his teenage son, the daughter of a Scottish laird raised on an off-grid island and an undisclosed number of other protesters have spent weeks secretly excavating a honeycomb of underground tunnels beneath Euston Square Gardens in north London. Now they’re refusing to leave their muddy burrows in protest at the building of the HS2 high-speed train route, due to terminate nearby.

To the protesters, the project is a monstrous scar on the landscape, destroying ancient woodlands and wildlife habitats in its path. But to northern Tories in particular, it’s a potent symbol of “levelling up” between north and south, bringing jobs to places and people neglected in the past. And this particular muddy standoff symbolises a rather bigger political conflict.

Research showing severe flood threat caused by global heating could set legal precedent in climate litigation

Human-caused global heating is directly responsible for the threat of a devastating flood in Peru that is the subject of a lawsuit against the German energy company RWE, according to groundbreaking new research.

The study establishes links from human-made greenhouse gas emissions to the substantial risk of a dangerous outburst flood from Lake Palcacocha, high in the Peruvian Andes. The resulting flood would trigger a deadly landslide inundating the city of Huaraz, and threatening about 120,000 people in its path.

Thanks to an inter-party agreement, the clean energy hub in the North Sea is set to be the largest construction project in Danish history

Denmark’s government has agreed to take a majority stake in a £25bn artificial “energy island”, which is to be built 50 miles (80km) offshore, in the middle of the North Sea.

The island to the west of the Jutland peninsula will initially have an area of 120,000 sq metres – the size of 18 football pitches – and in its first phase will be able to provide 3 million households with green energy.

Patricia Espinosa says fulfilling $100bn-a-year promise must be top priority to support developing world

Rich countries must step up with fresh financial commitments to help the developing world tackle the climate crisis, the UN’s climate chief has said.

Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, said fulfilling pledges of financial assistance made a decade ago must be the top priority before vital climate talks – Cop26 – later this year.

Proposals to accelerate electric car rollout also call for grants towards buying secondhand electric vehicles

Oil companies should be required to install rapid chargers for electric cars in all their petrol stations above a certain size by 2023 in order to speed up the rollout of vehicles with zero tailpipe emissions, according to thinktank Bright Blue.

Bright Blue’s report also calls for a reversal in cuts to government grants for battery electric vehicles (BEVs), a new grant to help low income households buy secondhand BEVs, and for the lower lifetime costs of BEVs compared with those of petrol and diesel cars to be made clear at the point of sale.

State found guilty of ‘non-respect of its engagements’ aimed at fighting global warming

A Paris court has convicted the French state of failing to address the climate crisis and not keeping its promises to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

In what has been hailed as a historic ruling, the court found the state guilty of “non-respect of its engagements” aimed at combating global warming.

Vicious circle of cheap but damaging food is biggest destroyer of nature, says UN-backed report

The global food system is the biggest driver of destruction of the natural world, and a shift to predominantly plant-based diets is crucial in halting the damage, according to a report.

Agriculture is the main threat to 86% of the 28,000 species known to be at risk of extinction, the report by the Chatham House thinktank said. Without change, the loss of biodiversity will continue to accelerate and threaten the world’s ability to sustain humanity, it said.

Antarctic bergs travelling north spark changes in ocean circulations and affect composition of our atmosphere

How does an ice age start? We know that changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun alter the amount of solar energy reaching our planet, but it has long been a mystery as to how this triggers such a dramatic change in the climate. A study shows that Antarctic icebergs may be responsible for tipping the balance.

Aidan Starr, from Cardiff University, and his team analysed sediments recovered by the International Ocean Discovery Program from the ocean floor south of South Africa. Within those sediments were tiny fragments of rock dropped by melting Antarctic icebergs. By studying the chemistry of the tiny deep-sea fossils found throughout the sediment core, the scientists were able to show that when climate conditions enabled icebergs to travel this far north they made the North Atlantic fresher and the Southern Ocean saltier.

The Oakey Coal Action Alliance, represented by the Environmental Defenders Office, wins long-running legal case

Activists have had a victory in the high court, which has upheld an appeal to have the expansion of the New Acland coalmine in Queensland’s Darling Downs reassessed by the state’s land court.

The Oakey Coal Action Alliance, represented by the Environmental Defenders Office, won its long-running legal case in a judgment handed down on Wednesday.

African wild dog pups are a dim black and look ancient, like old bronze, like the Capitoline Wolf

The African painted dog – also known as a wild dog or painted wolf – has ears that look as though they have been stitched together by a mad old toymaker. They are huge, bristly black disks – stretched upwards slightly and delicately pinned so that they form shallow bowls. At their bases are tufts of white bristles, for luck.

As a child in South Africa, I was forced more than once to watch – on a large pull-down projector screen in the school hall while it rained outside – Paljas, a uniquely, skin-crawlingly kitsch film set in a dusty railroad town that is visited by a travelling circus.