The Guardian

Astonishing rock paintings discovered in Colombia hold a lesson for today’s rainforest

In the past week, remarkable images of ancient cave art have hit the headlines: rock paintings made in South America around 12,000 years ago. The art, created on rock faces in the Serranía de la Lindosa, on the northern edge of the Colombian Amazon, is a riot of ochre-coloured geometrical pattern, handprints, and images of animals and humans. Until recent excavations, the works of art had been unknown to the international community. Their exuberant creativity will soon be revealed to a broad audience in the UK thanks to the Channel 4 series Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon.

The people who made these works of art were, it is believed, among the earliest humans to occupy the region, after migrations across what is now the Bering Strait some 25,000 years ago. Preliminary study of the iconography of the art has led scholars to speculate that among the deer, tapirs, alligators, bats, serpents, turtles and porcupines, long-extinct megafauna are also represented: mastodons, American ice-age horses, giant sloths, camelids.

The pick of this week’s best flora and fauna images, including a festive robin and a moth trap

Witness describes damage to mile-long stretch of Lugg as egregious act of ‘ecological vandalism’

Police and environment agency staff have moved in to stop further damage being done to a protected river, after what one witness described as one of the most egregious acts of ecological vandalism in 25 years.

A mile-long stretch of the River Lugg outside Kingsland, near Leominster in Herefordshire, has been flattened by a bulldozer. Trees have been felled, the river straightened and the river bed damaged.

It takes thousands of years for soils to form, meaning protection is needed urgently, say scientists

Global soils are the source of all life on land but their future looks “bleak” without action to halt degradation, according to the authors of a UN report.

A quarter of all the animal species on Earth live beneath our feet and provide the nutrients for all food. Soils also store as much carbon as all plants above ground and are therefore critical in tackling the climate emergency. But there also are major gaps in knowledge, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) report, which is the first on the global state of biodiversity in soils.

The corporate race for cultured protein rests on a view of human beings as greedy and incapable of change

The stuff of science fiction has landed on our plates. Meat grown in a lab, instead of inside the body of an animal, has been approved for sale for the first time. The Singapore Food Agency has given regulatory approval to Eat Just’s “chicken bites”, grown from the cells of a chicken that’s still flapping its wings. The US startup took a biopsy of cells from a live chicken, bathed them in a nutrient medium and grew them in a bioreactor, where they grew exponentially until the meat was harvested, encased in batter and turned into nuggets. The ruling means that, for the first time, cultured meat can be sold to the public.

Eat Just, Inc – and the dozens of other cultured meat startups racing each other to get lab-grown meat on to the menu across the globe – are selling the promise that carnivores will be able to eat meat with a clean conscience. Flesh without the blood, meat without murder and the beginning of the end of the environmental damage caused by intensive animal agriculture. The news was met with a sigh of relief from meat eaters across the world, and with good reason: it will allow us to carry on as before, eating what we like while clever technology sidesteps the problems caused by our appetites.

Proposals cite climate change as most severe threat to US reefs, which may be in danger of disappearing in some places

In a long-awaited move from the Trump administration, the US has proposed critical habitat protections for twelve coral species in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean. The rules would protect over 6,000 sq miles (nearly 16,000 sq km) of critical coral habitat.

The rules cite climate change as the most severe threat to all 12 coral species across their range. Impacts of the climate crisis include ocean acidification, which hinders the ability of corals to grow, and ocean warming, which causes corals to expel the algae living in their tissues in a phenomenon known as coral bleaching. Fishing and land-based pollution have also contributed to the species’ decline.

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.