The Guardian

Take renewable energy out of the equation and there isn’t much else expected to reduce fossil fuel use this side of 2030

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Australia has a problem with greenhouse gas emissions – a bigger problem than the political debate concedes.

Late last week, as Australians endured record August warmth and global heating-fuelled extreme rain, the federal government released data that suggest heat-trapping gases across most of the economy are currently headed in the wrong direction or yet to budge much from historic highs.

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Arithmetic over capacity does not add up, with supply chains a constraining factor

• Renewable energy auction secures enough power for 11m UK homes

It was a “record-setting auction” and “a significant step forward in our mission for clean power for 2030”, trumpeted the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, enjoying the contrast with last year’s auction flop under the Tories in which precisely zero bids were received to build offshore windfarms.

Miliband was claiming credit when it wasn’t entirely due, of course, because this year’s competition was designed well before the general election. Some version of success was guaranteed from the moment the last government said it was prepared to pay up to £73 a megawatt hour (in 2012 prices, confusingly) for offshore wind, a mighty leap from the £44 level that produced no takers in 2023. At the higher level of incentive, developers were bound to come out to play again.

Exclusive: Cut would mean at least 239,000 fewer hectares of nature-friendly farmland, according to RSPB

The government is to slash the nature-friendly farming budget in England by £100m in order to help fill what ministers say is a £22bn Treasury shortfall, the Guardian can reveal.

Nature groups and farmers have called this a “big mistake”, saying it jeopardised the government’s legally binding targets to improve nature.

Greenpeace urges Labour to ‘fulfil international obligations’ as critics question accuracy of official data

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The UK’s worst methane hotspots include the last coalmine, livestock farm clusters, landfills, power plants and North Sea oil and gas wells, according to an analysis.

The process has also thrown up serious doubts over the UK’s ability to calculate its methane emissions.

Climate scientists have already predicted that 2024 will be the hottest year ever

Japan has recorded its hottest summer on record after a sweltering three months marked by thousands of instances of “extreme heat”, with meteorologists warning that unseasonably high temperatures will continue through the autumn.

The average temperature in June, July and August was 1.76C higher than the average recorded between 1991 and 2020, the Japan meteorological agency said, according to Kyodo news agency.

Friends of the Earth says pollution exceeds healthy levels for nature in 9,062 localities

More than a quarter of neighbourhoods in England have pollution levels that are highly harmful to wildlife, new data shows.

Friends of the Earth has named 27.5% of areas “nature pollution hotspots” in new research. These are defined as places where air, water, noise and light pollution all exceed levels that are damaging to nature.

Will its bark be worse than its bite?

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Seabirds are in a precarious position as their breeding areas are threatened by climate breakdown and overfishing

Five seabirds have been added to the UK’s conservation red list, meaning they are at dire risk of local extinction.

The government has been urged to act as the arctic tern, Leach’s storm petrel, common gull, great skua and great black-backed gull join other seabird species such as the puffin on the list after severe population declines.

Mandatory reports should be published on how taxpayer’s money is spent on environmental stewardship, says campaigner

Landowners in England have been paid more than £9bn of taxpayer’s money in the past 30 years for environmental benefits, despite the decline in nature that has taken place during that time, data reveals.

Nature campaigner and author Guy Shrubsole, who unearthed the data for his new book The Lie of The Land, said large landowners should be forced to publish regular reports showing how they are stewarding their land for nature and carbon.

The Lie of the Land is published on 12 September by HarperCollins.

Scientists are trying to establish whether global heating caused the deaths of the rare river dolphins last year, before temperatures start to rise again

Set near photographer Benjamin Youd’s home in Sussex, River Story looks at the changing seasons and humans’ relationship with water

• River Story is exhibiting at ONCA Gallery in Brighton, 5 to 14 September

The new government must use its landslide majority to mend the damage to jobs and fish populations caused by neglect

It is a lonely and unglamorous job, being His Majesty’s official opposition, as Labour knows only too well. There were moments when, out of the spotlight, the party’s spokespeople in parliament heroically defended the public interest on some of the most important issues of the day. One example was during the post-Brexit Fisheries Act, where Labour made a formidable case that history has proved right. The question now is whether Labour will use its landslide majority to fix the extraordinary neglect of our marine environment that it previously lacked the votes for.

Back in 2020, when the fisheries bill was making its way through parliament, Labour’s fisheries spokesperson, Luke Pollard, made the case that the prime objective of the bill should be sustainability: there should be a duty on ministers to take the advice of scientists when allocating fishing opportunities so as to avoid overfishing. He also argued that as the right to fish was a public asset, which ministers conceded during the course of the bill, preference should be given to the part of the fleet which had the highest levels of employment and the lowest environmental impact: the smaller boats, whose activities are limited naturally by the weather.

Charles Clover is the co-founder of the Blue Marine Foundation

In an interview from jail in Greenland with the AFP news agency, the anti-whaling activist said Tokyo has a vendetta against him

Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson has said that authorities in Tokyo are seeking to make an example of him, as he awaits a possible extradition to Japan, while in detention in a Greenland prison.

Speaking to the AFP news agency, the 73-year-old US-Canadian campaigner said his time behind bars has not prevented him from continuing his fight to save whales.

Advocates against nets say sharks can easily swim underneath and drone surveillance is more effective

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Experts, marine conservation groups and an MP are all urging the New South Wales government to ban anti-shark nets, which kill large numbers of turtles and dolphins, after 51 nets were installed along the state’s coastline.

Last summer more than 90% of marine animals caught in shark nets were not sharks, while more than half of the 208 non-target species caught – such as turtles, dolphins and smaller sharks – were killed, data showed.

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I’ve discovered the perfect way to avoid the stress of travel, the mosquito bites and the overtourism. Plus, I can stay at home and tend my tomatoes while knowing I’m saving the planet

I haven’t been on holiday this summer, but don’t start tuning the tiny violins. I derive an unusual satisfaction from working when others aren’t (burning martyr is my preferred summer fragrance) and I don’t like change, or strange pillows. Plus, what would Susan, the pigeon who lives on our roof, and my bounteous crop of five unripe tomatoes do without me?

A summer holiday just doesn’t appeal. Is that weird? It feels as if the climate crisis is killing the notion of summer as something to look forward to and holiday hotspots (literally) are losing their lustre, with Greek islands reaching fatal temperatures and Sicily stricken with catastrophic drought.

Maria Sibylla Merian’s beautiful and disturbing illustrations, which shaped how we look at the natural world, will be on show at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum

More than three centuries after she made a perilous transatlantic voyage to study butterflies, a rare copy of the hand-coloured masterwork by the great naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian is returning to Amsterdam.

The Rijksmuseum, which holds more than half-a-million books on art and history, last week announced it had acquired a rare first-edition copy of Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname (Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium), described as a high point of 18th-century book production when the Dutch Republic was “the bookshop of the world”.

The south-east of the country is taking a battering and there is more to come as a ‘very strong cold front’ moves through on Sunday

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Tasmanian emergency services were urging residents and businesses along the Derwent River to prepare to evacuate on Sunday, while Victorians have been warned of destructive winds as wild weather batters the south-east of the country.

The Tasmanian state emergency service urged communities in Meadowbank, Glenora, Bushy Park, Gretna and Macquarie Plains to prepare for flooding, with authorities suggesting they could become isolated for several days. An evacuation centre has opened in New Norfolk.

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Several cases have been confirmed and cattle are being kept in restricted zones

The movement of sheep and cattle has been restricted in Norfolk and Suffolk after several confirmed cases of bluetongue disease.

A restricted zone has been put in place to “mitigate the risk of further cases of disease occurring”, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said.

Exclusive: Figures reveal just 16% of company-controlled sites of special scientific interest are in good condition

Water companies are allowing important natural landscapes they own to fall into disrepair, data shows, with only 16% of sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) under their control in good condition.

The companies have been accused of “polluting for profit” by not investing to improve the status of their SSSIs.

Photographer Paul Hilton shadowed Captain Robert Bergholz on his boat Restless to see how a local prawn trawler’s day unfolds