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Human rights groups around the world express outrage over ‘disproportionate’ punishment of Deanna ‘Violet’ Coco

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A senior UN official has said he is “alarmed” a peaceful Australian climate protester has been jailed for 15 months – and refused bail before her appeal – amid global outrage at her “disproportionate” punishment.

On Friday, Deanna “Violet” Coco was sentenced to 15 months in prison for blocking a single lane of traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in April in a protest staged to draw attention to the global climate emergency.

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The group was awarded $1.8m and praised as an ‘inspiring women led program’ using First Nations knowledge to protect land and sea

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The Queensland Indigenous Women Rangers Network has been awarded a £1m ($1.8m) Earthshot prize for its work on protecting the Great Barrier Reef.

The network was awarded the Revive Our Oceans category of the prizes, which was launched by Prince William and David Attenborough in 2020.

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Scientists who have replaced plastic packaging with seaweed among those to be given prize by Prince of Wales

Scientists who have replaced plastic packaging with seaweed are among those who have been given a £1m prize by the Prince of Wales’s Earthshot fund.

The prize is aimed at rewarding innovative solutions to tackle the climate and biodiversity emergencies, and is named after former US president John F Kennedy’s Moonshot challenge in the 1960s, which united millions of people around the goal of putting a person on the moon within a decade.

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Nicknamed ‘Green Jesus’, Canada’s environment minister once scaled the CN Tower in a climate protest. Ahead of efforts at Cop15 in Montreal to stop the destruction of nature, he explains why he approved a controversial oil project

A young boy in rural Canada learns the forest he loves will be chopped down, so he scales one of the trees and refuses to leave. He fails in his mission – but the destruction resonates deeply. In his adolescence, he studies politics and theology, fascinated by questions of power and moral obligation. As an adult, he scales the world’s tallest building – which was then the CN Tower in Toronto – to protest the destruction of the climate, only leaving when he’s escorted down in handcuffs. He rejects owning a car, cycling through the pounding rain, sleet and ice of a Quebec winter. A local newspaper calls him “Green Jesus”.

Fast forward to April 2022 and that same man, Steven Guilbeault, greenlights a controversial oil-drilling project off the coast of Newfoundland in his role as Canada’s minister of environment and climate change.

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The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a singing robin, a swimming buck and a praying mantis

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Shayleen Thompson of the Clean Energy Regulator had ‘robust’ exchange with Wentworth Group director

The independent senator David Pocock has criticised a senior government official’s conduct as “troubling and inappropriate” after parliament heard she was involved in a “robust” conversation with a scientific group about its evidence to an independent inquiry into Australia’s carbon credit scheme.

Shayleen Thompson, the executive general manager of government agency the Clean Energy Regulator, told Senate estimates she contacted the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists to raise what she considered “factual issues” with its submission to the Chubb review into the carbon credit system.

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Weeks before Cop15 in Montreal, leaked letter to EU shows host tried to water down deforestation regulations

The Canadian government has been accused of putting its domestic timber industry ahead of the global environment, following a leaked attempt to water down the world’s most ambitious regulations on deforestation-free trade.

Weeks before the United Nations biodiversity conference, Cop15 in Montreal, the host nation sent a letter to the European Commission asking for a reconsideration of “burdensome traceability requirements” within a proposed EU scheme that aims to eradicate unsustainably sourced wood products from the world’s biggest market.

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When these drop mechanisms for the Mavic Pro first came out years ago, they were around $100.  I figured if I waited long enough - the price would come down.  Picked this up for $37 on Amazon.  62,71,35,0,C

Eleventh month in a row of above-average temperatures means 2022 almost certain to set new mark

The UK remains on track for its warmest year since records began, after November became the 11th month in a row of above-average temperatures.

In order not to break the record, temperatures in December would have to drop to almost unprecedented lows, after an average mean temperature of 8.2C over November, the Met Office said.

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Since the bird was ‘rediscovered’ by accident in Borneo in 2020, ornithologists have returned to study the melodious species last documented more than 170 years ago

For more than 170 years, and despite its name, scientists and birdwatchers heard no babbling, chirping, tweeting or any other sounds from the black-browed babbler. The bird was long assumed to be extinct, until an accidental discovery by two local men, Muhammad Suranto and Muhammad Rizky Fauzan, in the forests of Borneo’s South Kalimantan province.

“I was out looking for forest products at the limestone hill just behind my home,” recalls Suranto. “I often look for birds and leftover wood to sell. We caught one of these birds on 5 October 2020. I’d seen it for a while, but I was never able to know its species.”

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What flew under the radar during the election campaign is actually one of the most ambitious climate goals of any place in the world

During the final weeks of the Victorian election campaign, Daniel Andrews took to wearing a State Electricity Commission jacket at press conferences, using it to highlight Labor’s flagship policy of supplying publicly owned renewable energy through a revived SEC.

It got a lot of airtime, that jacket, and the promise it represented – a return to an era when governments owned big energy assets and jobs were for life. The premier spruiked the idea in his victory speech, adding that greedy energy companies were leaving the industry and “goodbye to them”, while volunteers in red shirts chanted “S-E-C! S-E-C!” – surely one of the more obscure political chants in memory.

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One official says the commonwealth is ‘flailing around in the dark’ while seeking a way to lower bills

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With less than a week before the Albanese government is due to reveal its “comprehensive plan for energy price relief”, the states might be satisfied with one that is merely comprehensible.

At their most recent gathering in October, energy ministers were told to expect an outline of the plan by 1 December.

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As participants arrive in Montreal to negotiate this decade’s targets for protecting biodiversity, two themes are getting the lion’s share of attention

After more than two years of delays, Cop15, the once-in-decade global biodiversity summit, is about to begin. More than 10,000 participants from across the planet will start arriving in Montreal at the weekend to negotiate crucial goals for protecting biodiversity.

There has been a coordinated push behind some targets, namely from a group of countries that want to protect 30% of land and sea for nature (30x30) by the end of the decade. The idea of “nature positive” is another theme being promoted in the pre-Cop15 rhetoric from NGOs and governments.

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The Biden administration gave $75 million in aid to the three communities in Alaska and Washington. Eight other Tribal communities received an additional $40 million.

(Image credit: Emily Farnsworth/AP)

Rough, a 37-year-old Centrica facility off east Yorkshire, has been reopened to prop up the energy grid

“Do you hear that?” asks Chris O’Shea, putting a finger in the air and looking out over a tangle of pipes and workers in orange hi-vis overalls.

A deep whirr punctures the calm of the east Yorkshire coast, as a huge engine powers up and prepares to suck thousands of cubic metres of gas from deep beneath the North Sea.

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Exclusive: one university cites the industry as a ‘fundamental barrier to a more just and sustainable world’

Three more UK universities have banned fossil fuel companies from recruiting students through their career services, with one citing the industry as a “fundamental barrier to a more just and sustainable world”.

The University of the Arts London, University of Bedfordshire, and Wrexham Glyndwr University join Birkbeck, University of London, which was the first to adopt a fossil-free careers service policy in September.

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The UK is in the middle of its worst outbreak of bird flu. The current strain of H5N1 avian influenza has devastated wild bird populations, killing thousands and affecting threatened species such as puffins and hen harriers. Bird flu has also been wreaking havoc on poultry, and since 7 November, all captive birds in England have been kept indoors to prevent them catching the virus.

How are both wild and captive bird populations coping with the current strain of avian flu? And is the UK prepared to deal with another major animal disease outbreak? Ian Sample speaks with Phoebe Weston, a biodiversity writer for the Guardian, and Paul Wigley, a professor in animal microbial ecosystems at the University of Bristol.

Archive: BBC News, Sky News

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• Indigenous voice vote: foreign donations expected to be banned and campaigns forced to raise own cash
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The government services minister Bill Shorten was on ABC radio RN Breakfast when he learned the Medibank hackers had released all the customer information on the dark web.

Josh Taylor has reported on that here.

Our democracy is precious, our federal government is crucial to the success of the nation, and I know, as you do, that trust in our parliament, in our commonwealth, in politicians, has been falling dramatically. That’s a real problem and I really hope this begins to restore the trust.

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And scientist Dr Peter Ridd from the IPA accuses the BoM and CSIRO of ignoring what he claims are the benefits of global heating

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Keeping global heating as close to 1.5C as possible is critical for all ecosystems and societies, including the viability of Australia’s ocean jewel, the Great Barrier Reef.

The federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, this week launched a strong defence of the government’s climate targets after UN-backed scientists outlined the steps they said were needed to give the reef the best chance of retaining its status as a world heritage area.

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