The Guardian

Plan to form coalition of developing countries at COP 26 to help support efforts

The UK is to spearhead a major global crackdown on illegal timber and deforestation, with plans to form a coalition of developing countries against the trade as part of its hosting of crunch UN climate talks this year.

Deforestation is a leading factor in rising global greenhouse gas emissions, but many developing nations lack the means and institutions to combat illegal logging and regulate forest industries. The Department for International Development (DfID) will shortly lay out plans to help countries strengthen the rule of law, support the trade in responsible forestry and provide on-the-ground assistance to stamp out illegal logging.

Research shows abundance at sites in Europe has plunged by up to 80% in two decades

Two scientific studies of the number of insects splattered by cars have revealed a huge decline in abundance at European sites in two decades.

The research adds to growing evidence of what some scientists have called an “insect apocalypse”, which is threatening a collapse in the natural world that sustains humans and all life on Earth. A third study shows plummeting numbers of aquatic insects in streams.

Nicola Sturgeon criticises PM as officials look at London back-up for Glasgow summit

The government has warned that staging the COP 26 climate summit must represent “value for taxpayers’ money”, amid friction with the Scottish government over the policing costs of holding the event in Glasgow.

It emerged on Wednesday that government officials have been scoping out the ExCeL Centre in London’s Docklands for the high-profile international summit, which the UK is due to host in November.

Areas of Australia have burnt during the recent bushfire season that used to be too wet to burn. In this first episode of The Frontline, a new series that shows how everyday Australians are already experiencing the climate crisis, we go inside the new fire zone

Acting Lib Dem leader Ed Davey calls for action as he lambasts ‘shambolic’ approach to talks

A cross-party committee of MPs, green campaigning groups, business leaders and climate experts is needed to advise the government on crunch UN climate talks later this year to put the UK’s hosting of the COP26 talks back on track, the Liberal Democrat acting leader, Sir Ed Davey, is expected to say.

His call, which will form part of a speech on climate delivered at Birkbeck College in London on Thursday, comes after the energy minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, told a meeting of ambassadors that the UK could not afford to allow the talks to fail because of the additional pressures of Brexit.

As a parent of two children, aged nine and 12, I read with deep concern, though not surprise, your article on the rise of climate anxiety among young people (Take action to reduce anxiety, psychologists advise, 10 February).

I remember vividly the Guardian’s coverage of the Earth Summit in 1992 and the prof ound impact that had on me at the age of 26. Many climate marches and lifestyle changes later, I find myself also at a point of near despair when I look around at the abundance of poorly equipped, scientifically and socially illiterate leaders we have around the globe. They are not fit for the enormous task of beginning to fix our world – they are certainly not looking out for the next generation – and yet people my age seem to be voting for them in ever greater numbers.

MEPs support €29bn schemes, ‘locking Europe into burning fossil fuels for generations’

The EU has given its formal backing to 32 major gas infrastructure projects in a move critics say will lock Europe into burning fossil fuels for generations.

MEPs voted to support the European commission’s proposal by 443 votes to 169 on Wednesday, with 36 abstentions, provoking environmental groups to lament Brussels’ “hypocrisy” over the climate emergency.

Dams between Scotland, Norway, France and England ‘a possible solution’ to problem

A Dutch government scientist has proposed building two mammoth dams to completely enclose the North Sea and protect an estimated 25 million Europeans from the consequences of rising sea levels as a result of global heating.

Sjoerd Groeskamp, an oceanographer at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, said a 475km dam between north Scotland and west Norway and another 160km one between west France and south-west England was “a possible solution”.

Jonathan Watts breaks down the oil company’s statements on its plans to cut carbon emissions in the coming decades

BP’s new chief executive, Bernard Looney, has announced plans to make it a net zero company by 2050, and outlined its strategy in a document. The Guardian’s global environment editor, Jonathan Watts, examines what it says – and what it means:

BP today set a new ambition to become a net zero company by 2050 or sooner, and to help the world get to net zero.

The ambition is supported by 10 aims.

Johnson told MPs figure was £350m but sources say he made error in ‘car crash of an announcement’

The government has earmarked £1bn for safe cycling and walking routes in the next five years – not £350m, as Boris Johnson mistakenly told parliament in what one expert called “a car crash of an announcement”, the Guardian has learned.

But £1bn is still not enough to even build Greater Manchester’s 1,800-mile Bee Network of safe paths, according to its architect, Chris Boardman, a former Olympic cycling champion who is the region’s walking and cycling commissioner. He has asked Johnson for £1.2bn and says he will continue to do so.

Transport secretary’s disclosure of earlier target likely to rattle carmakers

The government could ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars in 2032, three years earlier than previously suggested, the transport secretary has said.

A consultation launched last week suggested all cars with internal combustion engines could be banned from 2035 but Grant Shapps told BBC radio on Wednesday the ban could come within 12 years.

A report shows that when bike lanes are built, people cycle more and drive less

If you took a time machine back to John Dobson Street in central Newcastle in 2013, you’d be struck by its transformation in the years since.

An inhospitable dual carriageway has been replaced by a single carriageway with wider pavements and a 400m bike lane. The result: a fourfold increase in people cycling along the route.

An expansive drilling plan has lured companies to pristine lands in the American west, despite a surplus in US oil supply

The Trump administration has offered oil companies a chunk of the American west that’s four times the size of California – an expansive drilling plan that threatens to entrench the industry at the expense of other outdoor jobs, while locking in enough emissions to undermine global climate policy.

Energy companies have leased 9.9m acres from the unprecedented 461m acres put up for rent by the Trump administration, according to a new analysis from the Wilderness Society.

Coal, oil and gas companies trying to ‘buy political power’, says Australian Conservation Foundation

The fossil-fuel industry has doubled its donations to the major parties in the past four years, new analysis suggests.

A new Australian Conservation Foundation report examining last week’s dump of donations data suggests the coal, oil and gas industry gave $1.9m in 2018-19.

As the sleep economy grows, online companies vie to sell us new mattresses, offering 100-day returns. This has helped create an impossible waste mountain – and a wild west of rogue recyclers

Mike Scollick and Richard Allsopp are talking about the worst things they ever found in a mattress. “We had one where I think a dog had been lying on it, and the whole thing was just jumping with fleas,” Allsopp says, shuddering. No one would touch it, so they had to use a cherry picker to move it. But that’s not the worst of it, Scollick says: “I stripped the cover off one once and it looked like somebody …” “Died,” interjects Allsopp.

It’s fair to say you need a strong stomach to be in the mattress recycling game. Which Scollick and Allsopp have, along with several million pounds’ worth of equipment in their Coventry warehouse. I have come to see Circom, their mattress recycling firm, at work. It’s a dirty but noble enterprise: Circom is one of only a handful of recyclers tackling the UK’s ever-growing mattress problem.

Damage to environment could wipe £368bn a year from growth by 2050 and UK will be hard hit, WWF warns

Loss of nature will wipe £368bn a year off global economic growth by 2050 and the UK will be the third-worst hit, with a £16bn annual loss, according to a study by the World Wildlife Fund.

Without urgent action to protect nature, the environmental charity warned that the worldwide impact of coastal erosion, species loss and the decline of natural assets from forests to fisheries could cost a total of almost £8tn over the next 30 years.

In the wake of devastation caused by wildfires, most recently in Australia, experts are seeking ways of limiting their impact by managing forests better

Vast waves of fire have torn through Australia in recent months, leaving forests of skinned trees in their wake. The wildfires have been one of the most damaging in the country’s history – more than 11m hectares (27m acres) have burned, killing 33 people and decimating wildlife populations.

But they are just the latest in a succession of destructive blazes that have been flaring across the planet – even in the Arctic circle – in the past five years. The response from authorities, in Australia, the Americas and the Mediterranean often seems scrambled and ineffective.

Power baron questions whether there is sound business case for project, saying government would need to indemnify it

Politically connected power baron Trevor St Baker says there is no way a new coal-fired power plant will proceed at Collinsville unless the Morrison government agrees to shield the project from a change of climate policy.

A day after Scott Morrison left open the option of his government indemnifying a new coal plant in Collinsville from future carbon risk, St Baker told Guardian Australia no project at that scale could proceed without an indemnity from the commonwealth.

The combination of extreme weather events will have cascading impacts on fish, platypus and invertebrates, threatening some with extinction

Australia’s rivers are being hit by a “triple whammy” of impacts that will have serious and long-term effects on species and could push some to extinction, according to experts.

Drought, bushfires in river catchments and now widespread heavy rain in the east of the country have created a cascade of impacts on fish, invertebrates and platypus.

Burning gas, coal and oil costs global economy $8bn a day and particularly harms children

Air pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for more than 4m premature deaths around the world each year and costs the global economy about $8bn a day, according to a study.

The report, from Greenpeace Southeast Asia and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, found that burning gas, coal and oil causes three times the number of deaths as road traffic accidents globally.