The Guardian

Watchdog finds UK is projected to fail to meet targets aimed at achieving climate goal

Boris Johnson’s commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the UK by 2050 is a “colossal challenge” that can only be achieved with a radical reassessment of priorities, according to Whitehall’s spending watchdog.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has found that the UK is projected to fail to meet the government’s targets for the years 2023 to 2027 and 2028 to 2032, which were set to establish a trajectory for reducing emissions by 80% over the next 30 years.

Boris Johnson promises to go further and faster by setting target of 68% reduction in annual carbon emissions

The UK will cut greenhouse gas emissions further and faster than any other major economy in the next decade, according to a new carbon target set out by the prime minister.

There will be a reduction of 68% in annual carbon emissions by 2030, compared with 1990 levels, a significant increase on the current target of about 57% reductions. The raising of ambition on tackling climate breakdown is intended to galvanise other countries to follow suit, as Boris Johnson prepares to co-host a virtual summit of world leaders on the climate next week.

Mass die-offs of coho salmon just before they are about to spawn have been traced to tire fragments washed into streams by rain

Pollution from car tires that washes into waterways is helping cause a mass die-off of salmon on the US west coast, researchers have found.

Data from 120,000 birdwatchers in 48 countries shows forest birds have expanded their range while area occupied by farmland birds has shrunk

Europe’s breeding bird populations have shifted on average one kilometre north every year for the past three decades, likely driven by the climate crisis, according to one of the world’s largest citizen science projects on biodiversity.

The European Breeding Bird Atlas (Ebba2) provides the most detailed picture yet of the distribution of the continent’s birds after 120,000 volunteers and fieldworkers surveyed 11m square kilometres, from the Azores in the west to the Russian Urals in the east.

Environment groups say as Cop26 hosts UK should show leadership and set tougher goal of 75% reduction in emissions

Green campaigners and climate experts are set for disappointment as the UK government prepares to publish its carbon target for 2030.

Environmental and development groups have been pushing the prime minister to opt for a stretching target of cutting emissions by 75% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels, which would have put the UK at the forefront of developed countries in fighting the climate crisis.

Guardian Australia revealed Josh Frydenberg raised changing the boundaries of significant wetlands after being lobbied by a Liberal donor

Labor says revelations that the former environment minister Josh Frydenberg proposed amending the boundaries to an area of internationally significant wetlands after he was lobbied by a developer and major party donor demonstrate why Australia needs an independent environmental regulator.

Federal Labor’s environment spokeswoman, Terri Butler, compared the now-treasurer’s past proposal in relation to Toondah Harbour to the Jam Land case, in which Frydenberg’s office sought advice about changing protections to grasslands at the centre of an investigation into illegal clearing on a property part-owned by the energy minister, Angus Taylor, and his relatives.

Huge drop in number of visits during Covid crisis raises concerns polluters are breaking laws with impunity

The Environment Agency has dramatically reduced the frequency that it attends water pollution incidents amid the Covid-19 pandemic, raising concerns that the crisis is allowing companies to break environmental regulations with impunity.

Between the start of April and the end of August this year the Environment Agency attended just 292 water pollution incidents, down from 1,726 during the same period in 2019, according to data obtained by the Guardian using freedom of information legislation.

Only 1% of the 3,000 supposedly protected areas in the Mediterranean ban fishing

Europe’s marine protected areas (MPAs), set up to prevent biodiversity loss at sea, are failing to protect the oceans according to an excoriating report from auditors.

Examining actions to protect marine life over the past decade, the European court of auditors raised a “red flag” warning the EU had failed to halt marine biodiversity loss in Europe’s waters and restore fishing to sustainable levels.

Environment secretary hails ‘Brexit success’ for animal welfare, but poultry to be excluded and Northern Ireland exempted

Plans to ban the export of live animals for slaughter and fattening are to be unveiled by the UK’s environment secretary, George Eustice, on Thursday.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the plans were part of a renewed push to strengthen Britain’s position as a world leader on animal welfare.

When the McCormicks came home on Wednesday, the Christmas tree in their Adelaide house had acquired a new ornament

The McCormicks went for a silver, pink and blue theme on their Christmas tree. The old plastic leaves were worn but looked beautiful with baubles on each branch and twinkling lights.

But this year the family tree included one very unexpected ornament: a wild – and somewhat confused – juvenile koala.

Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change calls for green recovery from pandemic

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The devastation caused by Covid-19 presents an opportunity for countries to rebuild their economies in a way that is environmentally responsible, researchers say.

“The only way you can meet the Paris agreement is by taking advantage of this moment … by combining the recovery from Covid-19 with the response to climate change,” said Dr Nick Watts, the chief sustainability officer for the NHS.

Exclusive: Letter obtained under FoI shows Frydenberg wanted to change Ramsar protections but maintain ‘ecological character’

The former federal environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, proposed removing protections from an area of internationally significant wetlands after he was lobbied by a developer wanting to build 3,000 apartments at Moreton Bay in Queensland.

A letter, obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws, shows Frydenberg wrote to the Queensland government in 2017 about Walker Corporation’s proposed Toondah Harbour apartment and retail complex to suggest the two governments jointly create a proposal to delist part of the Moreton Bay Ramsar wetland.

Campaign demonstrates butchery skills amid fears glut will go to waste due to smaller gatherings

Consumers are being urged to buy large turkeys – suffering a slump in demand due to smaller festive gatherings – in order to avoid a glut of Christmas birds going to waste.

Research from the Too Good to Go national food waste app reveals 30% of Britons are planning to buy a smaller turkey than normal, with two-thirds opting for compact and easy-to-carve turkey crowns for their Christmas table. Only 17% of shoppers are planning to buy larger birds, the research found, raising fears that many fresh ones could remain unsold or be needlessly wasted.

Joining China and other big polluters, Biden’s pledge of ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050 brings the Paris agreement goals ‘within reach’

This article originally appeared in the Nation and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global consortium of news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. The Guardian is the lead partner in CCN.

“The way we are moving is a suicide,” United Nations secretary general António Guterres said in an interview on Monday, and humanity’s survival will be “impossible” without the United States rejoining the Paris agreement and achieving “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, as the incoming Biden administration has pledged.

António Guterres lists human-inflicted wounds on natural world in stark message

• World is ‘doubling down’ on fossil fuels despite climate crisis – UN report

Humanity is facing a new war, unprecedented in history, the secretary general of the UN has warned, which is in danger of destroying our future before we have fully understood the risk.

The stark message from António Guterres follows a year of global upheaval, with the coronavirus pandemic causing governments to shut down whole countries for months at a time, while wildfires, hurricanes and powerful storms have scarred the globe.

Production must fall by 6% a year to avoid ‘severe climate disruption’ but Covid-19 funding is supporting increases

The world’s governments are “doubling down” on fossil fuels despite the urgent need for cuts in carbon emissions to tackle the climate crisis, a report by the UN and partners has found.

The researchers say production of coal, oil and gas must fall by 6% a year until 2030 to keep global heating under the 1.5C target agreed in the Paris accord and avoid “severe climate disruption”. But nations are planning production increases of 2% a year and G20 countries are giving 50% more coronavirus recovery funding to fossil fuels than to clean energy.

The outlook for Australian sites including the Blue Mountains and the Gondwana rainforests has deteriorated, report says

The outlook for five Australian world heritage sites including the Great Barrier Reef, the Blue Mountains and the Gondwana rainforests, has deteriorated, according to a global report that finds climate change is now the number one threat to the planet’s natural world heritage.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the official advisory body on nature to the Unesco world heritage committee, has found in its world heritage outlook that climate change threatens a third of the world’s natural heritage sites. The outlook has been published every three years since 2014.

Communities are being asked to bid to host the plant, which a state-backed project plans to build by 2040

Communities in the UK are being asked to bid to host a prototype nuclear fusion power plant, which a government-backed programme plans to build by 2040.

The site does not need to be near existing nuclear power stations but will need 100 hectares of land and a plentiful water supply. Ministers say the project would bring thousands of skilled jobs and be part of its planned “green industrial revolution” to tackle the climate crisis.

The midnight snapper caught at Rowley Shoals off Western Australia is 20 years older than the previous record holder

When it was born, the second world war was several years away, none of the Beatles were alive and there were about five billion fewer people above the waves than today.

An unnamed 81-year-old midnight snapper, caught by the Australian Institute of Marine Science in 2016, has been revealed as the oldest tropical reef fish known to science.

Governments to reduce pollution in oceans and end subsidies that contribute to overfishing

Governments responsible for 40% of the world’s coastlines have pledged to end overfishing, restore dwindling fish populations and stop the flow of plastic pollution into the seas in the next 10 years.

The leaders of the 14 countries set out a series of commitments on Wednesday that mark the world’s biggest ocean sustainability initiative, in the absence of a fully fledged UN treaty on marine life.