The Guardian

Paul Watson fighting efforts byJapan to have him stand trial there for 2010 confrontation with whalers

A Greenland court has ordered the anti-whaling activist Paul Watson to remain in custody until 5 September pending a decision on his possible extradition to Japan.

Watson, an American-Canadian who has been detained since his arrest in Nuuk in July, had appealed against the court’s decision, the statement on Thursday added.

News follows scrapping of two other Atlantic windfarms and axing of hundreds of jobs as costs surge

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The Danish company developing the world’s largest offshore windfarm in the North Sea has been forced to delay a major project off the north-east coast of the US, months after cancelling two nearby developments and cutting hundreds of jobs.

Ørsted has pushed back the start of commercial operations at its 704 megawatt Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut by a year, to 2026.

Increasing tree cover in urban areas could reduce heat-related deaths – but a fight has ensued between corporate interests and residents

It’s 9pm on a blistering July night in Plaza de Santa Ana, a square at the heart of Madrid’s literary district. The thermometer has barely dropped below 39C, but despite the heat a 78-year-old woman climbs on to a bench to give an impassioned speech to a 200-strong crowd.

“Did you think we weren’t going to be here, Señor Almeida?” She scans the crowd, searching for José Luis Martínez-Almeida, Madrid’s mayor, while anguished cries of “Arboricida!” (tree murder) punctuate the silence. Her face is immediately recognisable. She is movie star Marisa Paredes, an actor immortalised in Almodóvar classics such as High Heels – just one of many activists trying to stop what seems like a concerted campaign to strip central Madrid of its trees.

Exclusive: Fish farms in Macquarie Harbour are the greatest threat to survival of ancient ray-like species, scientists advising Australian government find

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Scientists advising the Australian government on how to save the threatened Maugean skate from extinction have recommended the salmon industry be either scaled back dramatically or removed from Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour after finding fish farms are the greatest threat to its survival.

The advice is included in a report by the government’s threatened species scientific committee that says the skate – an ancient ray-like species found only in the harbour in the state’s west – should be considered critically endangered.

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Rentokil to use the wasps as a sustainable alternative to sprays in museums and homes

The newest recruits for the battle against moths will be the smallest pest control team in town.

Rentokil plans to release entosite parasitoid wasps into the nooks and crannies of museums, heritage sites and homes to stop moth infestations.

District councils in low-lying areas say they have cut day-to-day services such as bin collections to fund pumping stations

The costs of preventing major floods caused by extreme weather and excessive rainfall have fuelled a growing financial crisis among district councils in low-lying areas of England, ministers have been warned.

Districts in the east of the country say they are having to cut day-to-day services such as bin collections to meet dramatic and unsustainable rises in payments levied to fund pumping stations used to protect communities from flooding.

WA newspaper throws tantrum and Tony Abbott blames ‘climate cult’ after prime minister misses fossil fuel company’s party

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If we are looking for something to illustrate Australia’s inability to have any coherent and sustained response to the climate crisis over the past couple of decades, we can find it in the reaction to the fossil fuel giant Woodside’s 70th birthday dinner.

That reaction being a little bit of climate science denial, plus some political patronage and big servings of fossil fuel cheerleading barely disguised as journalism.

Experts say climate policies contained within rightwing manifesto would wreck US climate targets and cost jobs

The impact of Donald Trump enacting the climate policies of the rightwing Project 2025 would result in billions of tonnes of extra carbon pollution, wrecking the US’s climate targets, as well as wiping out clean energy investments and more than a million jobs, a new analysis finds.

Should Trump retake the White House and pass the energy and environmental policies in the controversial Project 2025 document, the US’s planet-heating emissions will “significantly increase” by 2.7bn tonnes above the current trajectory by 2030, an amount comparable to the entire annual emissions of India, according to the report.

Exclusive: In 2024, 19 national temperature records have been set as weather extremes grow more frequent, climate historian says

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A record 19 national heat records have been broken since the start of this year, an influential climate historian has told the Guardian, as weather extremes grow more frequent and climate breakdown intensifies.

An additional 130 monthly national temperature records have also been broken, along with tens of thousands of local highs registered at monitoring stations from the Arctic to the South Pacific, according to Maximiliano Herrera, who keeps an archive of extreme events.

Influx of highly pathogenic strain a case of ‘not if, but when’ and could devastate native wildlife, experts say

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The Australian government is ramping up preparations for a highly pathogenic and contagious strain of bird flu potentially reaching Australia via its Antarctic territory and Macquarie Island, warning it could devastate wildlife and be passed to people.

Government agencies led by the Australian Antarctic Division at a planning exercise in Hobart on Wednesday were told an influx of the virulent H5N1 Avian flu strain that has killed millions of seabirds, wild birds and poultry overseas was a case of “not if, but when”.

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Kits emerge for after-dark dips in Northumberland, London, Kent and the Cairngorms after reintroduction drive

A beaver baby boom is under way across Britain this summer in places where the species had been extinct for centuries.

From Ealing in London to the Cairngorms in Scotland, and from Canterbury in Kent to the Wallington Estate in Northumberland, new kits have emerged from their lodges for an after-dark dip in the water.

Sources say government has dismissed some of the more ambitious ideas for fixing sewage crisis

Anti-sewage campaigners have warned of “extreme anger” if the Labour government does not radically reform the water regulator.

Sources at the Environment Agency (EA) and in the Labour party have told the Guardian that while Labour had spent time considering reforms of the EA and Ofwat in order to fix the sewage crisis, some stricter options that had been proposed were now off the table.

Climate protesters were removed from Parliament House by police on Wednesday morning. In a statement, the protesters said they felt 'betrayed by the Albanese government’s abandonment of major reform to our environment laws earlier this year, following pressure from coal and gas companies'

Unicef analysis also finds children in eight countries spend more than half the year in temperatures above 35C

Almost half a billion children are growing up in parts of the world where there are at least twice the number of extremely hot days every year compared with six decades ago, analysis by Unicef has found.

The analysis by the UN’s children’s agency examined for the first time data on changes in children’s exposure to extreme heat over the past 60 years.

Charity Commission says tweets about environmental protections were inappropriate in ‘tone and nature’

The RSPB has been criticised by the English charities watchdog over social media posts in which it accused named government ministers of being “liars” for watering down environmental protections.

The Charity Commission said the tweets a year ago were “inappropriate” in “tone and nature”, they had not been signed off at the correct level and the RSPB could have done more to prevent them going out.

Fires made at least three times more likely by climate crisis and emitted about 2bn tonnes of CO2, data reveals

Canada’s “record-shattering” wildfires last year produced nearly as much greenhouse gas emissions in one season as would be expected over a decade of fires in normal circumstances, data has shown.

The fires, in Canada’s “wildest season ever”, were made at least three times more likely by the climate crisis, and produced about 2bn tonnes of CO2, about a quarter of the total global emissions from wildfires last year, according to data in the State of Wildfires report, published on Wednesday.

Trump talked about ‘nuclear warming’ while Musk said the only reason to quit fossil fuels is that their supply is finite

Donald Trump and Elon Musk both made discursive, often fact-free assertions about global heating, including that rising sea levels would create “more oceanfront property” and that there was no urgent need to cut carbon emissions, during an event labeled “the dumbest climate conversation of all time” by one prominent activist.

Trump, the Republican US presidential nominee, and Musk, the world’s richest person, dwelled on the problem of the climate crisis during their much-hyped conversation on X, formerly known as Twitter and owned by Musk, on Monday, agreeing that the world has plenty of time to move away from fossil fuels, if at all.

Exposure to bacteria in landfill sites and polluted rivers may explain prevalence among city-dwelling birds

Urban ducks and crows might offer us a connection to nature, but scientists have found wild birds that live near humans are more likely to harbour bacteria resistant to important antibiotics.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is largely caused by the overuse of drugs such as antibiotics among humans and livestock.

Corolla Cross hybrid 2024 used 4.5 litres of fuel per 100km, 7% more than Toyota advertised, while Audi and Subaru models used less

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Australians are buying cars that consume more petrol than the fuel efficiencies marketed to them, repeated investigations have found, while many vehicles also emit more toxic fumes than manufacturers advertise.

The Australian Automobile Association (AAA) on Wednesday released the latest results from its “real-world” testing program, a four-year $14m government-funded scheme that compares the fuel consumption and emissions of vehicles in Australian driving conditions with the consumption each vehicle advertises.

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If elected, the Democrat is likely to face a trade-off over manufacturing jobs and economic independence from China

Every US presidential election is consequential but American voters face an unusually weighty decision in 2024. The outcome will have implications for foreign policy, social policy, and the integrity of the political system. But none of its consequences will be more profound or far-reaching than on global efforts to combat the climate crisis.

As president, Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement, while the US under Joe Biden rejoined it. Trump has promised to expand oil and gas production, and his campaign has said he will again withdraw the US from the Paris accord if he wins a second term.