Environment news

• Ill winds are blowing for Labour’s 2030 deadline for clean energy

  07-05-2025 19:38
  
  Loss of the vast Hornsea 4 offshore wind project is bad news but it reveals a big flaw in setting a deadlineDanish firm shelves huge UK windfarm project over rising costs“Immensely challenging” and pushing the limits “of what is feasibly deliverable”. That was the state-owned National Energy System Operator’s description of its own proposals on how to decarbonise electricity generation in Great Britain by 2030. In short, it thought clean power by that date, a key La
  
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• Sea pigs, icefish and trilobites: Antarctica’s mysterious marine life – in pictures

  07-05-2025 17:00
  Characterised by darkness and cold temperatures, the extreme environment of Antarctica’s deep sea is largely unexplored. Now, after a special marine science voyage, a team aboard Australia’s national icebreaker, RSV Nuyina, has collected some remarkable species from the waters around the Denman Glacier Read more about RSV Nuyina’s crucial mission to Antarctica Continue reading...
  
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• Inside the Chornobyl exclusion zone – in pictures

  07-05-2025 15:46
  A Russian drone attack has inflicted tens of millions of pounds of damage to the site of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, according to experts. The photographer Julia Kochetova has gained access to the area Continue reading...
  
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• ‘A cemetery of trees’: vast green expanses turned to dust as loggers plunder South America’s Gran Chaco

  07-05-2025 15:00
  
  Jaguars, giant armadillos and ocelots among species threatened by shrinking habitat in one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the worldIn the Gran Chaco forest, vast green expanses – home to jaguars, giant armadillos and howler monkeys – have turned to fields of dust. The forest once brimmed with life, says Bashe Nuhem, a member of the Indigenous Qom community, but then came a road, and soon after that logging companies. “It was an invasion. Loggers came without any consul
  
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• Blow to clean energy drive as major windfarm ditched

  07-05-2025 14:27 via bbc.com
  In a blow to the government's clean energy ambitions, a company cancels a huge windfarm off Yorkshire.
  
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• Real-world geoengineering experiments revealed by UK agency

  07-05-2025 13:19
  
  Trials will test ways to block sunlight and slow climate crisis that threatens to trigger catastrophic tipping pointsReal-world geoengineering experiments spanning the globe from the Arctic to the Great Barrier Reef are being funded by the UK government. They will test sun-reflecting particles in the stratosphere, brightening reflective clouds using sprays of seawater and pumping water on to sea ice to thicken it.Getting this “critical missing scientific data” is vital with the Earth
  
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• ‘It’s like putting a whale in a blender’: the rise of deadly ship collisions in Chile

  07-05-2025 12:00
  
  On average, five fatal whale strikes occur in the country’s waters each year, the highest in the world – and just a fraction of the total number killed, say researchersPhotographs by Francis PérezThe memory of a blue whale gliding past his small boat haunts Patricio Ortiz. A deep wound disfigured the cetacean’s giant body – a big chunk had been ripped from its dorsal fin. Cargo ships are the only adversary capable of inflicting such harm on a blue whale, he says.&l
  
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• New reports tell us cattle and sheep farming can be sustainable – don’t believe them, it’s all bull | George Monbiot

  07-05-2025 11:53
  
  Feeding the world sustainably is an incredibly complex challenge, yet some people are trying to sell us a bucolic fairytaleThe fire that has just destroyed 500 hectares (1,230 acres) of Dartmoor should have been impossible. It should not be a fire-prone landscape. But sheep, cattle and ponies have made it so. They selectively browse out tree seedlings, preventing the return of temperate rainforest, which is extremely difficult to burn. In dry weather, the moor grass, bracken and heather covering
  
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• Two-thirds of global heating caused by richest 10%, study suggests

  07-05-2025 11:00
  Paper in Nature Climate Change journal reveals major role wealthy emitters play in driving climate extremesThe world’s wealthiest 10% are responsible for two-thirds of global heating since 1990, driving droughts and heatwaves in the poorest parts of the world, according to a study.While researchers have previously shown that higher income groups emit disproportionately large amounts of greenhouse gases, the latest survey is the first to try to pin down how that inequality translates into r
  
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• UK government admits almost no evidence nature protections block development

  07-05-2025 07:00
  
  Whitehall analysis provides no data or research to support the government argument that environmental legislation holds up buildingThere is very little evidence that protections for nature are a blocker to development, the government has admitted in its own impact assessment of the controversial new planning and infrastructure bill.The analysis by Whitehall officials provides no data or research to back up the government’s central argument that it is environmental legislation that holds up
  
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• Country diary: I can hear the badgers, I can smell the badgers – but where are they? |

  07-05-2025 06:31
  
  Inkpen, Berkshire: Settled against one my favourite oaks, the birdsong falls away and the subterranean bumps and noises beginI’ve been waiting for a good time to go badger watching at an old, old sett I’ve known for 20 years. I’m hoping for a first sight of this year’s cubs, which begin to emerge around now. An evening after rain is best, before the nettles get too high. In damp ground, the worms might be up and badgers love to forage those, but we haven’t had signi
  
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