The Guardian
Portrait of a planet on the verge of climate catastrophe
On Sunday morning hundreds of politicians, government officials and scientists will gather in the grandeur of the International Congress Centre in Katowice, Poland. It will be a familiar experience for many. For 24 years the annual UN climate conference has served up a reliable diet of rhetoric, backroom talks and dramatic last-minute deals aimed at halting global warming.
But this year’s will be a grimmer affair – by far. As recent reports have made clear, the world may no longer be hovering at the edge of destruction but has probably staggered beyond a crucial point of no return. Climate catastrophe is now looking inevitable. We have simply left it too late to hold rising global temperatures to under 1.5C and so prevent a future of drowned coasts, ruined coral reefs, spreading deserts and melted glaciers.
Continue reading...Supermarket ban sees '80% drop' in plastic bag consumption nationwide
Coles and Woolworths have prevented an estimated 1.5 billion bags being introduced into the environment
The ban on single-use plastic bags by Australia’s two largest supermarkets prevented the introduction of an estimated 1.5 billion bags into the environment, and the retail industry is hopeful this is only the beginning.
Coles and Woolworths’ decision to stop offering single-use disposable plastic bags midway through the year was initially met with swift public backlash.
Continue reading...Trump officials argue climate change warnings based on ‘worst-case scenario'
Official minimize warnings and say government report considers only the highest possible levels of greenhouse gas emissions
The Trump administration has a new strategy for deflecting concerns about the warming planet.
Related: Why no US region is safe from climate change
Continue reading...Carmichael mine: federal election, rail access and native title stand in the way
Adani’s plans to get started quickly on a scaled-down version of its Queensland mega-mine still face numerous obstacles
The Indian mining giant Adani could be left in limbo until September – well after the federal election – before learning whether its controversial Carmichael coal project will be allowed to access the Queensland freight rail network.
Adani announced on Thursday it would self-finance the Carmichael mine and that construction would begin “imminently”. But the company still has to gain several regulatory approvals and negotiate access for its coal trains to use the Aurizon network.
Continue reading...Trump administration to allow seismic blasting harmful to marine creatures
Airgun testing in search for oil and gas could harm hundreds of mammals such as dolphins and whales off the Atlantic coast
The Trump administration is to allow marine creatures such as whales and dolphins to be harmed by companies as they search for potential oil and gas reserves off the Atlantic coast.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) has granted five operators permission to “incidentally but not intentionally harass marine mammals” while conducting surveys for fossil fuels in the seabed.
Continue reading...Week in Wildlife – in pictures
Red fody, beached whales and wildlife rescued from an Australian heatwave in this week’s gallery
Continue reading...Berta Cáceres case: a warning for those who would kill activists
Trial is notable for highlighting land and nature defender murders that ordinarily go unpunished
The sentencing on Thursday of seven men accused of murdering the Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres is only partial justice, but it should inspire anyone committed to ending the slaughter of land and nature defenders around the globe.
A court in Tegucigalpa handed down guilty verdicts on all but one of the eight accused, including two employees of the hydro-electric dam company that the indigenous Lenca woman had been campaigning against before her assassination on 2 March 2016.
Continue reading...Windy weather carries Britain to renewable energy record
Windfarms supplied third of UK’s electricity this week, with output hitting 14.9GW high
Storm Diana brought travel chaos to road, rail and airports, but the clouds did have a silver lining: the strong winds helped set a renewable energy record.
Windfarms supplied about a third of the UK’s electricity between 6pm and 6.30pm on Wednesday, a time of peak energy demand. Output hit a high of 14.9GW, beating a previous record of 14.5GW.
Continue reading...The school climate strike was a new generation's activism – and I'm so proud | Naaman Zhou
I’m six years out of school, nearly graduated from university, and I’ve never seen a protest like this
The kids couldn’t believe it. The adults couldn’t believe it.
Martin Place hadn’t seen anything like it for years, and Elly and her sister had never seen anything like it – ever.
Elly, 14, and Aidan, 10, had come thinking the strike would be “a small thing”. Elly said she didn’t know many people from her school who were coming. She found a thousand others.
Continue reading...Thousands of students join climate protest – video
Australian students have gone on strike from school and have converged on urban and regional centres demanding the government take action on climate change
Continue reading...Schools climate strike: the best protest banners and posters
Children may have skipped school to campaign on climate change - but taught a lesson or two on how to write a protest banner
Some were witty, some were rude and some – for older people at least – were incomprehensible.
The thousands of children who left class on Friday to protest inaction on climate change brought with them a dazzling array of protest banners and posters.
Continue reading...Australia’s carbon emissions grow at fastest rate since 2004
Report says Australia will fall short of meeting its nationally determined contributions under the Paris agreement
Australia’s carbon emissions have again continued to increase, according to official government figures released on Friday.
The results show emissions are rising much faster than in recent years – the quarterly growth trend is the highest it has been since 2004.
Continue reading...Climate change strike: thousands of students to join national protest
‘Strike 4 Climate Action’ will involve students in capital cities and 20 regional centres such as Ballarat and Newcastle
Thousands of schoolchildren across the nation plan to walk out of class to demand federal government action on climate change.
The ‘Strike 4 Climate Action’, inspired by 15-year-old Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg, will involve children in capital cities and 20 regional centres such as Ballarat and Newcastle.
Continue reading...Tokyo Olympics venues ‘built with wood from threatened rainforests’
Use of tropical plywood from Malaysia and Indonesia risks destruction of orangutan habitat, say NGOs
Wood from threatened south-east Asian rainforests has been used to build venues for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, according to complaints filed with organisers.
At least 134,000 large sheets of tropical plywood from Malaysia and Indonesia have been used as concrete moulds to build stadiums, causing what campaigners say is irreversible harm to precious biodiversity reserves.
Continue reading...Australia named as one of the world's worst performers on biodiversity
WWF rates Australia a zero due to the absence of biodiversity measures in our Paris climate change commitments
Australia has been named as one of the worst performers among a group of 100 nations due to the absence of biodiversity measures in our climate change commitments, according to a new report by WWF.
The report, published this week during the conference of parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Egypt, examines whether climate commitments from countries under the Paris agreement also offer benefits for nature and biodiversity.
Continue reading...Queensland flying fox species decimated by record heatwave
‘As far as we know, [the spectacled flying fox] has never suffered heat deaths before,’ ecologist says
Thousands of threatened flying foxes have dropped dead due to heat stress brought on by extreme temperatures in far north Queensland this week.
Conservationists and wildlife volunteers estimate more than 4,000 have perished this week during the record heatwave, which has seen temperatures in Cairns reach all-time highs of 42.6C.
Continue reading...Stunning aerial images of Western Australia's salt lakes – in pictures
Leah Kennedy is an artist and photographer based in Perth who has spent the past year taking aerial photos for a series called Salis. ‘Salis is latin for salt,’ she says. ‘There is a duality to salt it has both negative and positive connotations.’ The abstract beauty of the images is in stark contrast to the huge environmental problems that salinisation causes.
More images from the Salis body of work can be found here
• Look after the soil, save the Earth: farming in Australia’s unrelenting climate
Continue reading...China urged to lead way in efforts to save life on Earth
Delegates at UN biodiversity conference turn to Beijing to avoid point of no return
China must play a leading role if the world is to draw up a new and more effective strategy to halt the collapse of life on Earth, according to senior delegates at the close of this week’s UN biodiversity conference.
With the US absent, Europe distracted and Brazil tilting away from global cooperation, the onus has shifted towards Beijing, the diplomats said after two weeks of slow-moving talks on how to maintain the natural infrastructure on which humanity depends.
Continue reading...Even Republicans at odds with Trump's climate posture, poll finds
But many people still don’t agree with the consensus science that shows humans are the dominant cause of climate change
Americans, including Republicans, are becoming more convinced that climate change is causing extreme weather and sea-level rise, according to a new poll from Monmouth University.
Nearly two-thirds of Republicans, 64%, now think climate change is happening, compared to 49% three years ago. And more of the general population, 78% compared to 70% three years ago, acknowledge climate change.
Continue reading...Past four years hottest on record, data shows
World running out of time to combat climate change, warns meteorological organisation
Global temperatures have continued to rise in the past 10 months, with 2018 expected to be the fourth warmest year on record.
Average temperatures around the world so far this year were nearly 1C (33.8F) above pre-industrial levels. Extreme weather has affected all continents, while the melting of sea ice and glaciers and rises in sea levels continue. The past four years have been the hottest on record, and the 20 warmest have occurred in the past 22 years.
Continue reading...