The Guardian

Great Barrier Reef envoy tells party room the government should be seen as leaders on climate action, not ‘reluctant followers’

The Morrison government’s special envoy for the Great Barrier Reef, Warren Entsch, has called for the Coalition to adopt a net zero emissions target by 2050, and endorsed the prime minister’s recent signal that Australia could meet the 2030 target without needing to use carryover credits.

During Tuesday’s Coalition party room meeting – the second-last parliamentary gathering for 2020 – Entsch said the government should adopt the net zero target during a contribution where he called for targeted intervention to ensure people in north Queensland were able to access affordable insurance for cyclone events.

An area seven times larger than Greater London has been lost in what one activist called a ‘humiliating and shameful’ destruction

A vast expanse of Amazon rainforest seven times larger than Greater London was destroyed over the last year as deforestation surged to a 12-year high under Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

Figures released by the Brazilian space institute, Inpe, on Monday showed at least 11,088 sq km of rainforest was razed between August 2019 and July this year – the highest figure since 2008.

British agriculture will be transformed utterly by bold new proposals

This is a good week to start a revolution. With Brexit now on the brink of deal or no deal, Britain could yet retreat behind a wall of tariffs and protectionism. But if a free-trade deal is done and borders stay open, the way is clear for British agriculture to be transformed utterly. Today a seven-year transition plan has been announced by the environment secretary, George Eustice. It switches the money, currently £2.4bn a year, pumped into farm support from merely subsidising an industry to safeguarding the countryside and supporting good food and animal welfare. As the plan goes out to consultation, it will face a hundred reservations, but freed from the EU’s longstanding, anti-conservation agricultural policy it is emphatically in the right direction.

Within a decade, taxpayers will stop paying farmers on the size of their farms, now roughly £233 per hectare and comprising a third of farm incomes. This has been a massive distortion in favour of rich landowners. By 2028 farms are expected, says Eustice, to be “sustainable businesses that do not need to rely on public subsidy”. But lest that leads to arable degradation and the erosion of nature, and further exacerbates the climate crisis, the present subsidy is to be redirected to what the plan rightly called “public goods”.

Inquest into Ella Kissi-Debrah’s asthma death hears Lewisham council was slow to tackle issue

Illegal levels of air pollution in the area where a nine-year-old girl lived and died should have been treated as a public health emergency, an inquest heard.

Instead the London borough of Lewisham moved at a “glacial pace” to take steps to address toxic air from traffic where Ella Kissi-Debrah lived and went to primary school, the inquest in south London was told on Monday.

Some 300 homes in Fife to be fitted with free boilers, heaters and cooking appliances

Hundreds of homes in Scotland will soon become the first in the world to use 100% green hydrogen to heat their properties and cook their meals as part of a new trial which could help households across the country replace fossil fuel gas.

Some 300 homes in Fife will be fitted with free hydrogen boilers, heaters and cooking appliances to be used for more than four years in the largest test of whether zero carbon hydrogen, made using renewable energy and water, could help meet Britain’s climate goals.

European court of human rights case could result in countries being bound to take greater action

The European court of human rights has ordered 33 European governments to respond to a landmark climate lawsuit lodged by six youth campaigners, the Guardian has learned.

The plaintiffs’ British barrister says it could be the most important case ever tried by the Strasbourg-based judges.

The Goldman environmental prize honours the achievements of grassroots activists in six continents, recognising their efforts to protect natural habitats and push for political change, often at great personal risk

• Plastic in paradise: Goldman prize winner’s fight to protect Bahamas

New hearing into 2013 death of Ella Kissi-Debrah follows mother’s seven-year fight

An inquest is to consider evidence that illegal levels of air pollution caused the death of a nine-year-old girl, in a landmark legal case.

A coroner will be asked to rule that toxic levels of nitrogen dioxide, from the South Circular road in south London, led to the acute asthma attack that killed the primary school pupil, Ella Kissi-Debrah. Her mother, Rosamund, a former teacher, has fought for years for an inquiry into the role of air pollution from traffic in Ella’s death.

£1.6bn subsidies for owning land in England to end, with funds going to improve nature

Wildlife, nature and the climate will benefit from the biggest shake-up in farming policy in England for 50 years, according to government plans.

The £1.6bn subsidy farmers receive every year for simply owning land will be phased out by 2028, with the funds used instead to pay them to restore wild habitats, create new woodlands, boost soils and cut pesticide use.

Angus Taylor’s dire warnings about abandoning coal are going unheeded as the states forge their own path towards renewables

There may have been other weeks that packed in as many transformative developments in clean energy in Australia as the past seven days, but they don’t come often.

On Friday, the New South Wales parliament passed laws to build 12 gigawatts of clean energy – roughly equivalent to the country’s entire existing large-scale renewable capacity – and 2GW of energy storage in the state over the next decade.

Analysis: The PM changed tone as soon as Joe Biden was projected likely next US president. Will a policy pivot follow?

Scott Morrison’s language about Australia adopting an emissions reduction target of net zero by 2050, and about climate action more generally, is starting to warm up. The recent shift in the prime minister’s language invites two questions: is there a pivot under way, and is the shift real?

More than 70 countries have signed up to net-zero emissions by 2050. But not us! In the latest episode of The Frant for Guardian Australia, Jan Fran explains how we're still playing politics with climate change

The best of the week’s wildlife pictures from around the world, including desert-dwelling sheep and a plant that has evolved to hide from humans

Scientists hope remains will deepen understanding of Bryde’s whale evolution

A whale skeleton thought to be up to 5,000 years old has been discovered, almost perfectly preserved, by researchers in Thailand.

The skeleton, believed to be a Bryde’s whale, was found in Samut Sakhon, west of Bangkok. Researchers have excavated 80% of the remains and have so far identified 19 complete vertebrae, five ribs, a shoulder blade and fins. The skeleton measures 12 metres (39ft), with a three-metre-long skull.

Scientists fear fur farm animals in wild could create ‘lasting’ Covid reservoir that could then spread back to humans

Escaped mink carrying the virus that causes Covid-19 could potentially infect Denmark’s wild animals, raising fears of a permanent Sars-CoV-2 reservoir from which new virus variants could be reintroduced to humans.

Denmark, the world’s largest exporter of mink fur, announced in early November that it would cull the country’s farmed mink after discovering a mutated version of the virus that could have jeopardised the efficacy of future vaccines.

Around 10 million mink have been killed to date. Fur industry sources expect the fur from the remaining 5 million to 7 million mink will be sold.

With nearly 400,000 crew members trapped at sea by Covid restrictions, it’s time for retailers like Amazon to help press for key worker status

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This weekend is one of the planet’s busiest shopping sprees, with an estimated £66bn to be spent in the UK alone over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, much of it online. Yet as shoppers click and wait to collect, there is a crisis at sea among the people whose work brings us these goods.

It is no exaggeration to say that without shipping the global marketplace would collapse. It is responsible for the movement of 90% of all global trade. Even in normal circumstances, more than a million seafarers labour daily on the vessels that make up the world cargo fleet, their work barely noticed by consumers. As Covid-19 has ravaged the world, they have helped keep the global economy functioning, unseen.

Survey of 600 people finds some parents regret having offspring for same reason

People worried about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children because of fears that their offspring would have to struggle through a climate apocalypse, according to the first academic study of the issue.

The researchers surveyed 600 people aged 27 to 45 who were already factoring climate concerns into their reproductive choices and found 96% were very or extremely concerned about the wellbeing of their potential future children in a climate-changed world. One 27-year-old woman said: “I feel like I can’t in good conscience bring a child into this world and force them to try and survive what may be apocalyptic conditions.”

Amitav Ghosh, Margaret Atwood and Emma Thompson are among 20 activists and cultural figures to speak at Writers Rebel event

Writers and activists including Emma Thompson, Margaret Atwood and Amitav Ghosh are to speak about their favourite endangered animals as part of a remembrance day for lost species.

The snow leopard, pangolin and vaquita porpoise are among the endangered animals that will be championed by participants at the free online event, On the Brink, organised by Writers Rebel, which is part of Extinction Rebellion.

The winning images of the 2020 British Ecological Society photography competition, taken by international ecologists and students, celebrate the diversity of the planet’s flora and fauna

Ministers have refused to sign safeguards, potentially spelling disaster for farmers after Brexit

Ministers’ pledges to preserve the UK’s food and farming standards after Brexit will not prevent the import of lower-standard products and could spell potential disaster for Britain’s farmers, a report has found.

The government has repeatedly promised that a ban on chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef would remain in place after Brexit, and has made changes to the way future trade bills will be scrutinised. But ministers have refused to sign safeguards on imported food into law, despite pressure from consumers and civil society groups.