It may be tempting to add cardboard, plastic, old clothing and other waste to your home fire to keep warm and save money. But a study has shown that burning waste indoors has serious consequences for air pollution and especially for the amount of cancer-causing chemicals in the air.

Stoves and fireplaces cause about 29% of particle pollution emitted in the UK, but there are even greater problems in eastern Europe, where solid fuel heating is responsible for more than 45% of the particle emissions in many cities.

Dr Dóra Mentes, a research fellow at the University of Miskolc, Hungary said: “The town where I live, Miskolc, is known to have some of the most polluted air in Europe. Every winter, everyone notices the poor air quality.”

The problem is augmented by burning waste at home. In Hungary, 2-10% of households also burn waste in their home heating boiler, while in Poland it is at least 10%. In the UK, at least 4% of homes that burn solid fuel indoors also burn rubbish on their fire, and one survey suggests this could be as high as 37%.

Mentes and her team set about investigating what home waste burning meant for air pollution. A typical home wood burner was installed in their laboratory with sensors and sampling equipment connected to the chimney.

First, the researchers tested the air pollution when oak logs were burned. They then tested mixtures of oak logs and 10% waste, including plastics, textiles (both cotton and polyester), cardboard and coated papers such as drinks cartons.

Cotton, cardboard and coated paper caused the biggest increases in the particle pollution in the chimney. In some cases, adding 10% waste doubled the particle pollution.

Mentes also looked at the size and shape of the pollution particles using a scanning electron microscope. She said: “They can take on many different shapes. My two favourites are tar-ball conglomerates and soot agglomerates associated with inorganic crystal particles. As dangerous as they are, they are also remarkably beautiful.”

Adding waste meant many more globules of tar going up the chimney, along with greater amounts of carbon monoxide.

Perhaps of greatest concern were cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These increased by about two- to four times, depending on waste. Plastics and coated paper led to the biggest increases.

Modern municipal waste incinerators in the UK and Europe go to great lengths to reduce these toxic emissions but there are no protections when waste is burned at home.

Ironically, Mentes’ team found that adding waste reduced the efficiency of the wood stove. Adding plastics meant the wood burned too fast for the stove design, while paper and cotton clogged the air flow with ash. This meant that adding waste reduced the heat from the main fuel.

Problems with waste burning are not confined to eastern Europe. Air pollution in India’s cities often includes chemicals from burning waste and plastics. Globally, the climate impact of soot from open burning of waste is estimated to cause 2-10% of all carbon dioxide emissions.

A former carbon offsetting executive has been charged with fraud by US federal authorities, who allege that he helped to manipulate data from projects in rural Africa and Asia to fraudulently obtain carbon credits worth tens of millions of dollars.

Kenneth Newcombe, former CEO of C-Quest Capital LLC and a leading figure in the offsetting industry, was indicted on Wednesday in New York with commodities and wire fraud.

Prosecutors alleged he was part of a multi-year scheme that manipulated information on the impact of cooking stove projects in Africa and south-east Asia to make them appear far more successful at reducing emissions than they were in reality, also using the figures to attract investment of more than $100m in C-Quest.

From 2007 to December 2023, the 77-year-old was a board member of Verra, the world’s leading certifier of carbon offsets, and he also worked at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs at different times. He faces up to 20 years in prison if he is convicted of the most serious charges. He denies all allegations against him.

A spokesperson for Newcombe told Bloomberg that their client was dying of cancer. “He is confident that if he lives to see a jury hear this case, that jury will reject these false charges and return his good name to him,” the spokesperson said.

Cooking stove projects are one of the most popular carbon offsetting schemes, theoretically generating emissions reductions by swapping smoky fuels such as wood, paraffin or kerosene with cleaner alternatives.

By changing fuels, they can have major benefits: improving air quality, reducing the amount of time people spend collecting wood and slowing the loss of the world’s forests. But studies have raised widespread concerns about their claimed environmental impact, finding that schemes are overstating their effect by an average of 1,000%.

Shell and BP have both invested in C-Quest and are among several leading firms that have bought carbon credits from the firm.

Newcombe stepped down as CEO of C-Quest in February this year. In June, the new management of C-Quest announced that they had reported their former CEO to US authorities for his role in allegedly faking emissions data to generate millions of worthless carbon credits.

Following the announcement Verra said it was suspending the 27 projects implicated in the allegations and that it would be working with C-Quest to cancel the overissued credits as quickly as possible. Its statement at the time added: “Verra and the voluntary carbon market (VCM) as a whole are built on trust and integrity. We take any accusation of impropriety that undermines that trust very seriously.”

On Wednesday, US authorities said they would not be pursuing charges against C-Quest due to its open and timely disclosure of the alleged wrongdoing.

Prosecutors also charged Tridip Goswami, former head of C-Quest’s carbon and sustainability accounting team, with fraud. He could not be immediately reached for comment. Former chief operating officer Jason Steele has pleaded guilty to charges and is cooperating with the US government, the announcement said.

US attorney Damian Williams said: “As alleged, Kenneth Newcombe and Tridip Goswami, among others, engaged in a multi-year scheme to fraudulently obtain carbon credits by using manipulated and misleading data. They then sold those credits to unsuspecting buyers in the multi-billion-dollar global market for carbon credits.”

Bruce Springsteen has officially thrown his support behind Kamala Harris, endorsing her for president and simultaneously opposing Donald Trump, calling him “the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime”.

The Born to Run singer made the announcement in a video posted to his Instagram on Thursday evening (US time) in which he described the upcoming election as “one of the most consequential elections in our nation’s history”.

“Perhaps not since the Civil War has this great country felt as politically, spiritually and emotionally divided as it does at this moment. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Springsteen, who was a vocal supporter of Barack Obama and Joe Biden in their respective presidential campaigns, is the latest high-profile endorsement for Harris, joining Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand.

In the video, he praised Harris and Walz’s commitment to “a vision of this country that respects and includes everyone, regardless of class, religion, race, your political point of view or sexual identity, and they want to grow our economy in a way that benefits all, not just a few like me on top”.

“That’s the vision of America I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years.”

Trump, by contrast, “doesn’t understand the meaning of this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American”, the singer said.

“His disdain for the sanctity of our constitution, the sanctity of democracy, the sanctity of the rule of law and the sanctity of the peaceful transfer of power should disqualify him from the office of president ever again.”

Concluding, Springsteen said: “Now, everybody sees things different, and I respect your choice as a fellow citizen. But like you, I’ve only got one vote, and it’s one of the most precious possessions that I have. That’s why come November 5 I’ll be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Thanks for listening.”

The US ports strike that shut down shipping on the east and Gulf coasts for three days came to an end on Thursday after dock workers struck a tentative deal with port operators.

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) announced that the union had reached an agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) on wages, suspending their walkout until January. Work would resume immediately, the union said.

The strike – which involved 45,000 workers across 36 ports, from Texas to Maine – was the first to hit the east and Gulf coast ports of the US since 1977.

The tentative agreement is for a wage hike of around 62%, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. Both sides said in a statement they would return to the bargaining table to negotiate all outstanding issues.

Concern had been mounting about the potential economic impact of the strike, and the threat of shortages. JP Morgan analysts estimated the walkout could cost the US economy as much as $5bn a day.

After it emerged that the strike had ended, Joe Biden told reporters: “By the grace of God and goodwill of neighbors, it’s going to hold.”

“Today’s tentative agreement on a record wage and an extension of the collective bargaining process represents critical progress towards a strong contract,” the US president said in a statement. “I want to thank the union workers, the carriers, and the port operators for acting patriotically to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of critical supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery and rebuilding.

“Collective bargaining works, and it is critical to building a stronger economy from the middle out and the bottom up.”

Negotiations between ILA and USMX had broken down in June after the union accused USMX of violating the contract by introducing automation at some ports.

Both sides had accused the other of refusing to bargain, with the ILA demanding significant wage increases in line with the profits the industry has made in recent years.

Among the outstanding issues left in the contract that will be negotiated before the current contract extension until 15 January is the union seeking improved protections for automation in ports. The union opposes the introduction of automation that would result in any job losses.

The launch of a strike so soon to the election prompted scrutiny of key figures’ political views. ILA president Harold Daggett faced questions about his relationship with Donald Trump, while the Guardian uncovered social media posts by David Adam, chair and CEO of USMX, that were staunchly critical of Democrats.

Rachel Reeves is paving the way for a multibillion-pound increase in public-sector investment at the budget after the government announced plans to commit almost £22bn over 25 years to fund carbon capture and storage projects.

In what is expected to be one of the biggest green spending promises of the parliament, the chancellor, prime minister and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, will unveil the details on a visit to the Liverpool city region on Friday declaring a “new era” for clean energy jobs.

With less than a month before the 30 October budget, Reeves said the announcement would come as one of a “drumbeat” of measures to kickstart economic growth.

The government hopes the investment will reignite Britain’s struggling heavy industry by funding two major carbon capture and storage (CCS) clusters; one in Teesside in north east England, and a second in north-west England and north Wales.

The technology is controversial because it has never been used at commercial scale in the UK before, while environmental campaigners have warned big energy firms could use it to extend the life of their fossil fuel assets.

Greenpeace said there was a danger the government was “locking ourselves into second-rate solutions”.

However, ministers and officials expect it to play a major role in the government’s climate ambitions as a vital way to reach net zero.

The prime minister will say the commitment had helped to bring in an expected £8bn of private investment by some of the world’s biggest energy companies, including BP and Norwegian energy company Equinor.

Reeves’ comments come after she hinted in her speech to Labour’s party conference in Liverpool last week that she would change the government’s fiscal rules to allow billions of pounds more in capital spending.

“We’ll set out details of the fiscal rules at the budget, but we have got to make sure we unlock that space for capital investment,” she told journalists ahead of Friday’s announcement.

Friday’s announcement comes amid fears of a fresh energy price shock triggered by an escalating Middle East conflict.

Reeves issued a warning that Britain would not be immune to the fallout from spiralling oil prices, which rose 5% on Thursday, although cautioned that the response so far on financial markets had been muted.

“There’s a risk both on inflation and on GDP. It’s something we’ll keep a close eye on .”

Carbon capture technology works by trapping emissions from power plants or factories before the emissions enter the atmosphere and contribute to the climate crisis. The emissions will be transported via gas pipes to be stored beneath the seabed.

Keir Starmer said: “Today’s announcement will give industry the certainty it needs – committing to 25 years of funding in this groundbreaking technology – to help deliver jobs, kickstart growth, and repair this country once and for all.”

Officials expect the projects to attract private sector investment of about £8bn while directly creating 4,000 jobs and supporting 50,000 jobs in the long term.

The East Coast Cluster is backed by oil companies including BP and Equinor. The HyNet North West project is being developed by the Italian oil company Eni.

Using CCS to produce “blue hydrogen” or to run gas power plants is controversial among green groups and some climate researchers because it requires a steady supply of fossil gas, which produces emissions that are not captured when it is extracted and transported.

Instead, the government should invest more in clean power sources and “green hydrogen”, which is made from water and renewable electricity using a device called an electrolyser, according to campaigners.

Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “For a government that is committed to tackling the climate crisis, £22bn is a lot of money to spend on something that is going to extend the life of planet-heating oil and gas production.

“Carbon capture may be needed for hard-to-abate sectors, such as cement production, however, hydrogen derived from gas is not low-carbon and there is a risk of locking ourselves into second-rate solutions.”

Lorenzo Sani, an analyst at Carbon Tracker, a climate thinktank, told the Guardian the government’s decision “repeats the mistakes of the previous administration” by committing new funding without first reassessing its CCS strategy.

Sani said the plan “remains anchored in outdated and overly optimistic [cost] assumptions”, which risk “squandering even more taxpayer money on carbon capture projects that are both high risk and not future proof”.

Dr Andrew Boswell, an independent researcher into the CCS industry, dismissed the investment as a “massive giveaway to the fossil fuel industry” and a “bad decision” for bills, energy security and the planet.

Britain’s initial attempt to establish a carbon capture industry began in 2009 under a Labour government. But after the Conservative victory in 2010 the £1bn funding plan faltered and was scrapped in 2015. The Conservatives went on to shortlist the two CCS projects for funding in 2021 but did not commit to the investment before they were voted out of power in July.

Miliband said: “I was proud to kickstart the industry in 2009, and I am even prouder today to turn it into reality.

“On Monday, 150 years of coal in this country came to an end. Today, a new era begins. By securing this investment, we pave the way for securing the clean energy revolution that will rebuild Britain’s industrial heartlands.”

A local elections official who became a hero to election deniers was sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday for leading a voting system data-breach scheme inspired by the rampant false claims that fraud altered the 2020 presidential outcome.

Tina Peters allowed a man affiliated with the pillow salesman and election-lie trafficker Mike Lindell to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa county election system.

Jurors found Peters guilty in August, convicting her of seven counts related to misconduct, conspiracy and impersonation, four of which were felony charges.

Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced her on Thursday. Peters had argued for probation. Barrett, in delivering his sentence, said it was clear Peters had not shown remorse for her actions.

Barrett called out Peters for being “as defiant as a defendant that the court has ever seen” and said he believed Peters would do it all over again if she could. He accused her of seeking fame, despite her claims that she didn’t want attention for her actions.

He said she didn’t respect the courts, law enforcement, government officials or her colleagues, and had abused the power of her position. She didn’t take the clerk role “particularly seriously”, he said, noting she hadn’t completed certification, and that “one scandal after another followed you in your time as the clerk.”

He added, “You are no hero, you abused your position, and you’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

At trial, prosecutors said Peters, a Republican, was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the presidential election results.

Peters was charged for allowing access to county voting equipment by an outside person, who was given security credentials under a different name. Materials and passwords were then published online on Telegram and on the rightwing outlet the Gateway Pundit, which is also being sued for defamation for election-related lies.

During the sentencing hearing, Peters said she was “very taken aback” by how she was being depicted and said she felt bad for her critics who were asking for harsh sentences. She said she was just trying to do her job as a clerk.

“I’m just appalled. I feel bad for them because I know, I’ve often said, God doesn’t like people messing with his kids, and I believe I’m a child of God,” she said, according to video posted to social media. “And I believe that it was important for someone to stand up, and I chose to do that.”

She also told the judge she cannot go to prison because she needs to sleep on a magnetic mattress, which she has been using since 1995 to help with health conditions such as chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.

Peters’ actions came as conspiracies grew around vote tabulation machines, especially those owned by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion has fought against the lies spread about its machines, securing a large settlement from Fox over its false claims on the topic.

That anti-machine sentiment is still at play on the right in the 2024 election – with some pushing for hand counts of all ballots instead of machine tabulation.

Peters exemplifies the type of insider threat to elections that officials fear – people working within elections themselves could upend systems from within. Pro-democracy groups praised the sentencing on Thursday, saying it should make clear to those trying to undermine elections that there are consequences.

“It’s good that she’s being held accountable,” said Nick Penniman, CEO and founder of Issue One, a cross-partisan democracy group. “Today’s sentencing should send a message to other potential saboteurs that messing with America’s elections isn’t a game, and that law enforcement is watching.”

Peters’ actions in Mesa county came at a cost, both financial and reputational. County officials say they are now associated with this breach and with election denialism. A county commissioner estimated the financial fallout to county taxpayers at $1.4m, Colorado Public Radio reported, for Peters’ salary and recounts, among other costs.

The county clerk position was the first Peters held, starting in 2018. She ran unsuccessfully for the state’s top elections job, the secretary of state, in 2022.

An executive representing ports where tens of thousands of workers went on strike this week made a series of critical and crude remarks about Joe Biden, tied Kamala Harris to concerns about over-taxation, and appeared to endorse a rightwing conspiracy theory.

David Adam, chairman and chief executive of the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), attacked prominent Democrats in a string of social media posts uncovered by the Guardian.

It comes after about 45,000 dockworkers at ports along the US east and Gulf coasts walked off the job – the first such strike since 1977 – as part of a dispute between the USMX and the International Longshoremen’s Association over pay and automation.

The sweeping strike, disrupting 36 ports from Maine to Texas, has already raised fears of supply shortages and price increases on the eve of November’s election.

A month ago, when a LinkedIn user suggested that “everything Biden has touched in the past is turning to shit!”, Adam replied: “The runny kind….”

It was part of a discussion about how Biden’s student-debt relief plan was being held up in the courts. In another comment on the thread, Adam wrote: “If ya can’t get an American Democrat to pay what they borrrowed [sic], how you gonna get a California illegal immigrant to pay back their $150K loan the CA Dems are offering?”

Three months ago, another user appeared to endorse a popular conspiracy theory surrounding the emergence of a totalitarian world government while commenting on a video of Biden discussing immigration. “Did I miss the vote America took in agreement of One World Order? Treasonous actions have consequences!” they wrote.

“I think Kerry and Gates voted two thumbs up on that a few years ago …” Adam replied.

John Kerry was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, and served as secretary of state under Barack Obama and Biden’s climate envoy. Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft. Both men have been tied to debunked conspiracy theories surrounding secret global regimes.

USMX did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Adam’s posts.

Just a few weeks ago, Adam commented on a meme that claimed the US has a 48% fuel tax, which was debunked in 2022 by Politifact, when the same post was shared in Canada with the same claim.

He seemed to suggest responsibility lay with the Biden administration and Harris, however, writing: “Someone ask Kamala to explain why this is such and is she gonna fix it?!”

Earlier this year, when another user suggested Biden had smiled while walking away from a question, Adam commented: “Actually I thought he looked like he just sharted himself.”

When the strike began on Tuesday, Biden urged the port operators – represented by USMX – to give workers a “meaningful increase” in pay. Trump, meanwhile, blamed the strike on high inflation under Biden and Harris.

The timing of the strike, just weeks before the election, also raised questions about the ILA’s relationship with Trump. A photograph of the union’s president, Harold Daggett, meeting Trump in November resurfaced on social media this week.

After an assassination attempt on Trump in July, the ILA released a statement describing the 2023 meeting as “wonderful” and “productive”, and hailing Daggett’s “long relationship” with the former president.

The union has not made an endorsement ahead of next month’s presidential election. It backed Biden in 2020, declaring him to be “a true friend of the ILA and working men and women across America”.

An independent brewery in West Sussex is poised to become the first in Britain to make its beer using an ultra-high-temperature heat pump in place of an oil boiler.

Hepworth Brewery expects to cut the emissions from wort boiling – an essential step in beer-making to extract flavour – by using a heat pump that can produce steam at a temperature of up to 130C.

The new heating system will recycle the waste vapour from the brewing process, which is normally vented into the air, by using the heat pump to raise the temperature of the steam back to 130C before returning it to the brewer.

The heat pump prototype, designed by a start-up based in south-west London, is expected to lower the brewer’s fuel costs by 40% and could soon be used to power the full brewing process, it said.

Andy Hepworth, the founder and chairman of Hepworth Brewery, said the government-backed project would enable the company to “switch off our oil boiler” in favour of the “reliable new way to recycle our waste heat”.

Heat pumps are expected to play a major role in the government’s ambition to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 in line with its legally binding climate targets. However, the technology has been slow to gain acceptance by householders wary about whether replacing a gas boiler with an electric heat pump could keep their homes warm.

The government hopes to encourage households to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by the end of the decade. Only 220,000 were installed last year.

The company behind the brewery’s new heat pump system, Futraheat, based in Surbiton, said the technology proves that heat pumps can play a role in cutting emissions from industrial processes as well as households.

Tom Taylor, the chief executive of Futraheat, said: “Heat is a major component of a huge range of industrial processes, from pharmaceuticals to food and drink, and vast amounts of this is delivered by steam.

“Until now, heat pumps have been both unaffordable and unable to deliver heat at the temperature that industry requires,” he addd. “This project demonstrates the technology can now be implemented within a brewery. We’re confident it can then be rolled out across a range of industries, in the UK and worldwide.”

Love is in the air on the Colorado plains – the kind that makes your heart beat a bit faster, quickens your step and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

It’s tarantula mating season, when male spiders scurry out of their burrows in search of a mate, and hundreds of arachnophiles flock to the small farming town of La Junta to watch them emerge in droves.

Scientists, spider enthusiasts and curious Colorado families piled into buses just before dusk last weekend as tarantulas began to roam the dry, rolling plains. Some used flashlights and car headlights to spot the arachnids once the sun set.

Back in town, festival-goers flaunted their tarantula-like traits in a hairy leg contest – a woman claimed the title this year – and paraded around in vintage cars with giant spiders on the hoods. The 1990 cult classic film Arachnophobia, which follows a small town similarly overrun with spiders, screened downtown at the historic Fox Theatre.

For residents of La Junta, tarantulas aren’t the nightmarish creatures often depicted on the silver screen. They’re an important part of the local ecosystem and a draw for people around the US who might have otherwise never visited the tight-knit town in south-eastern Colorado.

Word spread quickly among neighbors about all the people they had met from out of town during the third year of the tarantula festival.

Among them was Nathan Villareal, a tarantula breeder from Santa Monica, California, who said he heard about the mating season and knew it was a spectacle he needed to witness. Villareal sells tarantulas as pets to people around the US and said he has been fascinated with them since childhood.

Colorado Brown tarantulas are the most common in the La Junta area, and they form their burrows in the largely undisturbed prairies of the Comanche national grassland.

In September and October, the mature males wander in search of a female’s burrow, which she typically marks with silk webbing. Peak viewing time is an hour before dusk when the heat of the day dies down.

“We saw at least a dozen tarantulas on the road, and then we went back afterwards and saw another dozen more,” Villareal said.

Male tarantulas take around seven years to reach reproductive readiness, then spend the rest of their lifespan searching for a mate, said Cara Shillington, a biology professor at Eastern Michigan University who studies arachnids. They typically live for about a year after reaching sexual maturity, while females can live for 20 years or more.

The males grow to be about 5in long and develop a pair of appendages on their heads that they use to drum outside a female’s burrow. She will crawl to the surface if she is a willing mate, and the male will hook its legs onto her fangs.

Their coupling is quick, as the male tries to get away before he is eaten by the female, who tends to be slightly larger and needs extra nutrients to sustain her pregnancy.

Like many who attended the festival, Shillington is passionate about teaching people not to fear tarantulas and other spiders. Tarantulas found in North America tend to be docile creatures, she explained. Their venom is not considered dangerous to humans but can cause pain and irritation.

“When you encounter them, they’re more afraid of you,” Shillington said. “Tarantulas only bite out of fear. This is the only way that they have to protect themselves, and if you don’t put them in a situation where they feel like they have to bite, then there is no reason to fear them.”

Many children who attended the festival with their families learned that spiders are not as scary as they might seem. Roslyn Gonzales, 13, said she couldn’t wait to go searching for spiders come sunset.

For the graduate student Goran Shikak, whose arm was crawling with spider tattoos, the yearly festival represents an opportunity to celebrate tarantulas with others who share his fascination.

“They’re beautiful creatures,” said Shikak, an arachnology student at the University of Colorado Denver. “And getting to watch them do what they do … is a joy and experience that’s worth watching in the wild.”

On a clear August morning, Skookum John manoeuvres his fishing boat, Sweet Marie, out of the Tofino harbour and into the deep blue waters of Clayoquot Sound on Canada’s west coast.

On shore, the late summer sun shines on visitors from all over the world who have flocked to the bustling fishing town on Vancouver Island, where they wander in and out of surf shops, art galleries and restaurants and pile into small boats in the hope of glimpsing orca, humpback and grey whales.

“You’ll never find this anywhere in the world,” John says, gesturing through the Sweet Marie’s window at the mosaic of islands and mountains, cloaked in thick green rainforests, that form part of the Clayoquot Sound Unesco biosphere reserve.

The Sweet Marie motors deeper into Clayoquot Sound, past a web of inviting channels and inlets, and cruises past a raft of sea otters resting in the gentle swells. Hunted nearly to extinction, sea otters are one of the celebrated species found in the reserve, along with sea lions, seals, wild salmon and bald eagles.

John, a member of Ahousaht First Nation, makes his living on the water, where he helps train coast guard members in marine rescue, ferries passengers to islands and hot springs and takes visitors on whale watching tours. Today, he is taking members of Clayoquot Action, a conservation group focused on protecting wild salmon, to the site of one of the area’s more controversial industries: open-net pen salmon farms.

Dan Lewis, the co-founder and executive director of Clayoquot Action, is incredulous that industrial salmon farming is allowed to take place in a globally recognised protected area. “Why are we doing this here?” he says, gesturing at the rich waters, home to a colourful array of sea life that includes giant rock scallops, tufted anemones in green, pink and white, dark green kelp forests, red sea urchins and purple-tinged Dungeness crabs.

Clayoquot Sound is also home to some of the last 60 salmon farms left on North America’s west coast. For decades, as many as 100 farms in Canadian waters have raised mostly non-native Atlantic salmon in pens in the Pacific Ocean.

But now the salmon farming industry, blamed for contributing to the collapse of wild salmon stocks, faces an uncertain future. In June, the Canadian government announced a ban on open-net pen salmon farming from coastal waters in July 2029, as part of a commitment “to protecting wild salmon and promoting more sustainable aquaculture practices”.

Concerns about the industry’s impact on wild salmon played a leading role in the closure of about three dozen farms in British Columbia over the past seven years, after Clayoquot Action and other groups documented sea lice outbreaks and other diseases in farmed fish, including at farms along migration routes for wild salmon.

The decision to ban all remaining British Columbia farms, lauded by conservation groups and wild salmon advocates, has been soundly criticised by Canada’s salmon farming industry, which largely consists of multinational corporations that farm salmon around the world, including in the UK. The industry says moving salmon farming to closed containment systems on land or in the water, as the government suggests, is not logistically feasible and would be prohibitively expensive.

For John, who has been campaigning against salmon farms since 2015, the Canadian government’s new 2029 deadline may just be an empty promise, after its earlier, unfulfilled commitment to remove open-net pen salmon farms by 2025. “I won’t believe anything that the government says until I see it happen,” he says, as the Sweet Marie slowly circles a floating salmon farm in a small bay, barely a stone’s throw from the seaweed-strewn shore.

John’s scepticism is shared by Hasheukumiss, hereditary chief of the Ahousaht Nation and president of the Maaqutusiis Hahoulthee Stewardship Society, which manages economic development for the nation. But the two men have very different perspectives on the salmon farming industry, mirroring broader divisions about whether open-net pen farms should be allowed to operate in Canadian waters.

In 2010, the Ahousaht Nation signed an agreement allowing Cermaq Global, a Mitsubishi subsidiary that also farms salmon and trout in Norway and Chile, to operate in its territorial waters. The agreement was subsequently renewed with changes, according to Hasheukumiss, also known as Richard George.

“One of the things that I wanted to address was the environmental concerns because we are the true stewards of our back yard,” he says. “It was the sea lice and the pathogens that were the biggest concerns we had.”

According to Hasheukumiss, Cermaq was responsive and worked with the nation to address that concern.

Hasheukumiss’ assessment of the Canadian government’s handling of fish farms is less rosy. Since he inherited his title in 2020, he says he has discussed the issue with three different cabinet ministers, yet has seen little in the way of consultation with his nation.

A five-year transition away from open-net pen farms is not a realistic timeframe for the industry, he says. “In five years, there is no way this industry – or any industry – can go to fully contained systems.”

As the Sweet Marie noses slowly towards a rectangle of floating walkways bordered by black net fencing, John stands and slips the engine into neutral. He calls out to one of the salmon-farm workers, jokingly asking why he’s pretending to be busy. It’s his nephew, who recently started working at the Cermaq farm, one of 13 facilities in Clayoquot Sound that employ about 20 Ahousaht members.

The two chat while Lewis stands at the Sweet Marie’s bow, peering through the nets to get a view into the pens, as part of the group’s regular monitoring of the industry’s operations.

At an unstocked salmon farm nearby, the Cermaq’s delousing boat, Aqua Service, towers over the Sweet Marie from its berth. The vessel has a large rear deck fitted with a patented delousing system, which pulls fish from the pens and uses seawater to flush off the lice. The treatment process takes just two tenths of a second, aiming to reduce stress and fish deaths.

In Ahousaht territory, Cermaq has been experimenting with technology to reduce the industry’s impact on wild salmon. A semi-closed containment system – consisting of a semi-permeable bag that stretches 25 metres below the water – is used to raise young salmon smolts while reducing their exposure to sea lice. The bag draws water from deep in the water column where sea lice can’t survive.

Fewer sea lice on the farmed smolts make it less likely wild salmon swimming past the farms will pick up the parasites. After a year, the young salmon are moved to open-net pens to grow to marketable size.

The semi-closed containment system Cermaq is trialling is expensive – costing C$20,000 (£11,000) a month in diesel alone. Brian Kingzett, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association, representing Cermaq and other companies, says there is little appetite to make big investments and navigate the time-consuming licensing process for new technology, especially with the future of the industry in question.

“There are lots of reasons why farmers want to go to closed containment for that first year; Cermaq has been trying to do it,” he says. “It took them six years to get a licence. We only have a five-year window.”

Kingzett says the industry was “completely gobsmacked” by the Canadian government’s decision to remove open-net pen salmon farms by 2029, calling closed containment “an unfeasible option”.

Setting up a medium-sized land-based salmon farm, capable of producing 5,000 tonnes of fish a year, could cost C$1.8bn (£1bn), according to a 2022 report commissioned by the British Columbia government. The report’s authors said it was difficult to estimate the costs of setting up large-scale farms because there are no land-based salmon farms in the world that are reliably producing large amounts of fish.

BC’s first land-based salmon farm, Kuterra, is now raising steelhead trout, after achieving barely one-third of its production target, according to the BC government report. Another land-based venture, West Creek, has stopped farming salmon altogether. And on the other side of the country on the Atlantic coast, a land-based salmon farm, Sustainable Blue, suffered a mass die-off, reportedly because of an equipment malfunction, and is now in receivership.

But Lewis says closed containment systems on land are the only option if the Canadian government is serious about protecting wild salmon stocks.

“To our understanding, there is nothing that can actually have zero discharge that’s in the water,” Lewis says. “What we want to see in the next five years is all the farms come out of the water. We don’t believe there are any in-water solutions.”

Kingzett says closing down open-net pen salmon farms will harm small coastal communities. Any land-based containment systems will need to be close to plentiful power and water supplies, not to mention customers, he says.

If BC’s salmon farms disappear, Kingzett is confident farmed salmon will still be sold in the country’s supermarkets – but it will come from places such as Chile and Norway.

Inside the Sweet Marie’s cabin, John has placed a sticker with the hashtag #FishFarmsOut near the helm. He is eager for the industry to leave Ahousaht territory, even if it means losing the money fish farming has brought to the community.

“Wealth isn’t money,” he says. “What we have in our territory, what we have in the ocean, what we have in the air, that’s wealth.”

• This report is a collaboration with The Narwhal, anonline magazine that that reports on environmental issues in Canada