The government cannot achieve the air quality improvements advised by medical experts, so has set its targets lower for the next 10 years, Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary has admitted as she unveiled a new environmental plan. Coffey also confirmed that there would be no major new funding for achieving the targets in the 262-page Environmental Improvement Plan

Doug Parr, UK policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “If this is a roadmap, it’s a roadmap to the cliff edge. This Conservative government promised the most ambitious environmental plan of any country on earth. Instead, here’s yet more paperwork containing a threadbare patchwork of policies that fail to tackle many of the real threats to our natural world. This won’t do.”

Air pollution experts pointed to research by King’s College London and Imperial College London that has shown the government could achieve the more stringent targets, which are supported by the public in polls, if it took stronger action on the sources of pollution, which include diesel cars and wood-burning.

Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of charity Asthma + Lung UK, said: “Air pollution is a public health emergency which causes 36,000 premature deaths in the UK every year. The government has ignored our calls to bring forward its compliance date, and instead said it will make our air cleaner by 2040. This falls far short of what’s needed – it means that for another 17 years, children will be forced to live, learn and play in toxic levels of air pollution, and a new generation will be condemned to breathe air so dirty it can stunt their lung growth, cause lung conditions like cancer, and trigger existing conditions including asthma.”

Richard Benwell, chief executive of the conservation group Wildlife and Countryside Link, said, “Too many people live in polluted, nature-deprived neighbourhoods, at great cost to mental and physical health,” he said. “Billions of pounds could be saved for the NHS if everyone lived in a healthy environment, and millions of lives could be brightened.”

Thérèse Coffey admits UK can’t achieve air pollution target advised by experts | Pollution | The Guardian

Shell’s figures will be suitably eye-watering: adjusted annual profits are expected to come in around $83bn (£67bn) against $55bn a year ago, including around $19bn in the final quarter of the year, against $16.3bn in the same period of 2021.

The firm’s prized dividend has been lifted by 15%. Shell is spending $18.5bn buying back its own shares this year, a statistic that has only increased the calls for the firm to allocate more of its cash pile towards renewable energy and less to rewarding shareholders. This year’s capital investment is expected to come in at between $23bn and $27bn, but renewables will make up a relatively small proportion of this.

“Let’s not forget that these companies are richer because the rest of us are poorer,” said Alice Harrison of campaign group Global Witness. “Brits should be asking themselves whose side their government is on – those of us living in cold, draughty homes or an industry that’s riding the wave of the energy crisis and returning billions to its shareholders?…”

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson says, “Oil companies don’t help themselves when they take the decision to continue to buy back billions of dollars in their own shares, rather than increase the amount of investment in renewable sources of energy.”

Shell and BP face tough job of keeping customers and investors happy as profits roll in | Oil and gas companies | The Guardian

 Seaweed farming could constitute 10% of human diets by 2050 it could reduce the amount of land needed for food by 110m hectares (272m acres) – an area twice the size of France. In parts of Asia, seaweed already makes up 2% of diets.

About 650m hectares (1,606m acres) was identified as plausible for seaweed farming, with the largest areas in Indonesia and Australia.

“Cultivating seaweeds for food, feed and fuel within even a fraction of the 650m hectares of suitable ocean could have profound benefits to land use, emissions reduction, water and fertiliser use,” the authors wrote.

Scott Spillias, a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia who led the study published in Nature Sustainability, said: “People around the world are looking at the ocean as this big ‘untapped’ resource and asking if we should be using more of it.” He said. “If we grow seaweed, the best thing to do is for people to eat it rather than feed it to livestock, but that’s going to need some big cultural shifts.”

The cultivation and use of red Asparagopsis seaweed as a cattle feed supplement that has been shown to result in drastically lower methane emissions from cows. The study suggested cuts to methane emissions from using Asparagopsis could save 2.6bn tonnes of CO2-equivalent a year by 2050 – about the same as the current greenhouse gas footprint of India.

Food, feed and fuel: global seaweed industry could reduce land needed for farming by 110m hectares, study finds | Food | The Guardian

The regular dividends that investors receive from owning shares in UK-listed companies soared by 16.5% in 2022, far outstripping wage growth in either the private or public sector.

Including the value of one-off dividends, which companies make from time to time to reward investors above and beyond their regular annual payouts, the total value was still up, albeit by a more modest 8% to £94.3bn.

Investors’ returns from underlying dividends – excluding volatile one-off payouts – reached £84.8bn during the year, partly owing to a £3.8bn boost from the weakness of the pound, which inflated the figures for dividends paid in dollars. 

The rise in share income was particularly steep for those who invest in banks and oil companies, which were boosted by the high oil and gas prices that have contributed to the cost of living crisis.

Link Group said “resurgent” banking dividends were the most significant driver, accounting for a quarter of the rise. Soaring energy prices, which have saddled households with sky-high bills, pushed oil payouts higher by a fifth. Oil companies also implemented share buybacks, which can strengthen the share price as another way of rewarding investors, with Shell alone repurchasing £16bn of its own stock.

 Living costs are rising faster than salaries, although not faster than dividends. 

Dividends from UK-listed firms up 16.5% in 2022, far outstripping pay rises | Investments | The Guardian

 In Haiti, at least half its children, 2.6 million, are expected to need immediate lifesaving assistance in 2023, UNICEF warns.

In the last two years, the number of Haitian children in need of humanitarian aid has increased by half a million as an upsurge in armed violence, a resurgence of cholera, combined with food insecurity and skyrocketing inflation have restricted access to essential health, nutrition, water and hygiene, and education services for millions of children and their families.

1 in 2 children depend on humanitarian aid to survive this year – Haiti | ReliefWeb

  Sales of U.S. military equipment to foreign governments rose 49% to $205.6 billion in the latest fiscal year.

Sales approved in the year included $13.9 billion worth of F-15ID fighter jets to Indonesia, $6.9 billion worth of Multi-Mission Surface Combatant ships to Greece, and $6 billion worth of M1A2 Abrams tanks to Poland.

There are two major ways foreign governments purchase arms from U.S. companies: direct commercial sales negotiated between a government and a company, and foreign military sales in which a foreign government typically contacts a Defense Department official at the U.S. embassy in its capital.

The direct military sales by U.S. companies rose 48.6% to $153.7 billion in fiscal 2022 from $103 billion in fiscal 2021, while sales arranged through the U.S. government rose 49.1% to $51.9 billion in 2022 from $34.8 billion the prior year.

U.S. arms exports up 49% in fiscal 2022 | Reuters (archive.is)

  Housing Secretary Michael Gove has admitted he believes the system of regulation was “faulty and ambiguous” and not policed properly by the government and it contributed to the Grenfell fire tragedy

 Chevron announced a record-shattering $35.5 billion in profits for 2022 as well as a $75 billion share buy-back to lavish on its wealthy shareholders. Chevron also raised its quarterly dividend by around 6%.

“What Big Oil has done over the last year is the definition of war profiteering,” said Jamie Henn, a spokesperson for the Stop The Oil Profiteering (STOP) campaign. “After working with Russia for decades, companies like Chevron have used the war in Ukraine as cover to jack up prices and suck billions directly out of the pocket of American families.” Henn added, “Big Oil is rolling in cash while families are struggling to heat their homes or fill their gas tanks.”

 Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement, “It has price gouged consumers in plain sight and it’s going to get away with it. Once oil prices spiked after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a government not compromised and captured by Big Oil would have done the commonsense thing of taxing Big Oil’s windfall profits and returning the proceeds to consumers,” said Weissman. “The failure to impose a windfall profits tax reflects Big Oil’s raw political power, not any principled policy dispute.”

‘The Definition of War Profiteering’: Chevron Posts Record $35.5 Billion in Profit for 2022 (commondreams.org)

 Crises around the world have taken away the headlines about Syria’s problems. Syria now has the sixth-highest number of food insecure people in the world

Following 12 years of war, an economy crippled by runaway inflation where food prices have increased nearly twelve-fold over the last three years, a currency that has collapsed to a record low, 12 million people do not know where their next meal is coming from. 2.5 million people who are severely food insecure, and their lives are at risk without food assistance. Child and maternal malnutrition are increasing at a speed never seen before – not even during over a decade of war.

Another 2.9 million people are at risk of sliding into hunger, meaning that 70% of the population may soon be unable to put food on the table for their families.

United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director, David Beasley, said:

 “If we don’t address this humanitarian crisis in Syria, things are going to get worse than we can possibly imagine. Another wave of mass migration like the one that swept across Europe in 2015 – is that what the international community wants? If not, we must urgently seize this opportunity to avert the looming catastrophe and work together to bring peace and stability to the Syrian people.”

Hunger soars to 12-year high in Syria, WFP chief calls for urgent action – Syrian Arab Republic | ReliefWeb

The National Farmers’ Union (NFU), the lobby group which represents powerful voices in the agriculture sector, questioned about the government’s proposed targets on water pollution, tree planting and rewilding.

It told the government: 

“Broadly, we consider the level of ambition across the nutrient targets to be unachievable, inconsistent and irrational. The NFU and its members are committed to building on past successes and further reducing nutrient losses to the environment from agriculture. However, this effort must be balanced with the need to produce food, fibre and energy on farm, thereby protecting the rural economy and maintaining food security.”

 It did not agree with targets to reverse species extinction, and in particular spoke out against reintroducing lost species. It said: 

“The NFU has long advocated that we should support species that are already present before we seek to introduce new species. So instead, we believe that we should aim to prevent the loss of species, as such a bespoke target approach to rare and threatened species could be beneficial in driving action to reduce biodiversity loss.”

It argued that the concept of rewilding was damaging to the countryside, warning against “adopting an approach that risks undermining the social fabric of rural communities”. It said:

 “Rewilding, for example, ignores the fact that our iconic farmed landscapes are valued by the many who make 4bn visits to the British countryside each year.”

It also said the tree planting target of 17.5% coverage was too ambitious. It said

“An increase in tree canopy and woodland cover from 14.5% to 17.5% equates to 415,000 hectares of tree cover by 2050, approximately 15,000 hectares of trees a year. This is extremely ambitious, if not unachievable.” 

Environmentalists said the NFU was “deluded and dangerous” and that it was “stunting progress towards a greener future” after its lobbying against nature restoration policies was revealed.

Rob Percival, the head of food policy at the Soil Association, said: 

“The NFU’s attitude towards environmental targets is defeatist, deluded and dangerous. There is clear scientific rationale for regenerating woodlands and increasing tree cover, but the NFU thinks it’s too difficult. Our rivers are choking on excess nutrients, primarily due to the proliferation of intensive livestock systems, but the NFU has dismissed pollution reduction targets as ‘irrational’. Instead they propose more of the same – more poultry, more pollution.

Farmers’ union called UK environment targets ‘irrational’ and ‘unachievable’ | Farming | The Guardian