Climate and transport organisations warn ministers not to sleepwalk into crisis' amid Iran war oil and gas shortagesPrivate jets should be banned and the speed limit on UK motorways reduced to 60mph as part of a pre-emptive effort to ease the looming fuel supply crisis, according to leading climate and transport organisations.The group - including Greenpeace and Transport and Environment - are calling on ministers not to sleepwalk into a crisis" that could lead to severe shortages of jet fuel and spiralling petrol prices at the pump in the coming months. Continue reading...

This week's best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Butterfly Conservation poll is open until 7 June with choice of 60 species from small tortoiseshells to purple emperorsWill it be the rapidly disappearing former garden favourite, the small tortoiseshell? Or the poet John Masefield's oakwood haunting thing", the charismatic purple emperor? Or perhaps the brimstone, the ultimate harbinger of spring?The question of which is Britain's favourite butterfly is being put to a popular vote for the first time. The charity Butterfly Conservation is running the poll, which runs until 7 June, giving people the chance to choose their favourite from the 60 species that fly around Britain every summer. Continue reading...

Rents will rise and homelessness quadruple in a decade unless serious steps to cut emissions are taken, University of Sydney researchers find

Thames at Ham designated as one of 13 new swimming areas across England to be monitored for water qualityThe first designated bathing water area on the River Thames in London will welcome swimmers for the official start of the bathing season on Friday as one of 13 new monitored swimming areas across England.The Thames at Ham, in south-west London, has been designated as a new river bathing water area after campaigners gathered evidence to show thousands of people use the river for swimming throughout the year.Canvey Island foreshore, EssexEast Beach at West Bay, Bridport, DorsetFalcon Meadow, Bungay, SuffolkGranville Parade Beach, Sandgate, KentLittle Shore, Amble, NorthumberlandNew Brighton Beach (east), MerseysideNewton and Noss Creeks, DevonPangbourne Meadow, BerkshireQueen Elizabeth Gardens, Salisbury, WiltshireRiver Dee at Sandy Lane, Chester, CheshireRiver Fowey in Lostwithiel, CornwallRiver Swale in Richmond, YorkshireRiver Thames at Ham and Kingston, Greater London

Groups say supreme court justice, who owns oil stocks, may be violating ethics codes by participating in certain casesThe supreme court justice Samuel Alito, who owns stock in oil companies, may be violating court ethics codes by participating in certain cases that could benefit big oil, government watchdog groups say.In a Thursday letter, a coalition of watchdog organizations called on the Senate judiciary committee to investigate Alito, the sole supreme court justice with holdings in energy companies. Continue reading...

New undercover video appears to show cruel treatment of salmon at Cooke hatchery amid push for chickenification' of fishThe Trump administration is keen to do to fish what has been done to chickens - mass-produce them on an industrial scale to accelerate the US's output of seafood.But this chickenification" of fish may come at a hefty cost to the environment and to the fish themselves, as a new undercover video at one of the country's leading fish farms has highlighted. Continue reading...

When the birds started nesting on her land at Useless Bay, Chile, Cecilia Duran Gafo decided she would protect them from people and predatorsFive pairs of rubbery feet carry velvet-sheathed black-and-white bodies towards the rope line separating the king penguins from the dozen or so visitors, who look on in awe. As these emissaries shuffle over, a hundred of their cohorts parade on a nearby bank, splashing around in the water and regurgitating food into their chicks' open beaks.The king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) makes its home almost exclusively on islands in the Southern Ocean. But it has been coming to this wind-battered bay in southern Chile's Tierra del Fuego region for hundreds of years, probably because its shallow shores offer protection from marine predators and humans. Continue reading...

Environmentalists hail decline but warn weakened laws could reverse gainsBrazil's Atlantic forest, the country's most threatened biome, last year recorded its lowest level of deforestation since monitoring began 40 years ago, a new report shows.The forest is Brazil's most populous biome, and home to 80% of the population and major cities such as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. In 2025 it recorded 8,658 hectares of deforestation, marking the first time it has fallen below 10,000 hectares since 1985. Continue reading...

If resolution is passed, governments will recognise their legal responsibility to cut greenhouse gas emissionsThe UN's willingness to tackle the climate crisis in a fair and legal way will be tested next week during a critical vote of the UN general assembly in New York.Every member state is being asked to back a series of landmark findings on climate justice from the international court of justice (ICJ) as part of a new political resolution. If passed, it will mean governments recognise they have a legal responsibility to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, including tackling fossil fuels. Continue reading...

Woodland Trust also finds significant north-south divide in tree cover, leaving many people at risk of poor healthNigel Farage's constituency of Clacton-on-Sea is a tree desert", leaving people more exposed to air pollution, poorer health, lower life expectancy and the impact of rising temperatures, according to a new report.The Essex town is rated the worst-performing for equal access to trees in England, with the highest proportion of urban residents - 98.2% - living in neighbourhoods with critically low access to trees. Continue reading...

King Arthur is said to have transformed into a chough when he died, its red feet and beak representing his bloody endDecades after disappearing from the jagged cliffs around Tintagel Castle on the coast of north Cornwall, a bird with legendary connections to the area has returned.The custodian of Tintagel, English Heritage, and local ornithologists have declared that choughs - charismatic corvids with red beaks and feet - are back. Continue reading...

Scientists are focusing on improving apples' resilience after stressors like wild temperature swings and droughtTerence Robinson still remembers the Valentine's Day Massacre - of 2015, not 1929.For the Cornell University horticulture professor, the term doesn't conjure up Tommy guns and Al Capone's Chicago. Instead of a gangster, the culprit in Robinson's massacre was the weather. And its victims were the apple orchards of the north-eastern United States. Continue reading...

Premier Roger Cook has the prime minister's implicit support but he's making it harder for federal Labor to meet its much-vaunted climate targets

Rescuers hope to move young male humpback from Baltic to North Sea after being stranded for a month near LubeckRescuers trying to save a stranded humpback whale off Germany's Baltic coast have coaxed the mammal on to a barge in the hope the vessel can take it to safety in deeper waters.Amid intense media attention, the high-stakes rescue mission, funded by two multi-millionaires, is being watched by hundreds of onlookers, many of whom are camped nearby to monitor the spectacle. Continue reading...

AGM briefly adjourned after protesters wearing T-shirts labelled No more big oil' burst into songThe chair of NatWest was forced to defend the bank against accusations of climate backtracking" at a chaotic annual shareholder meeting, which was temporarily suspended owing to singing protesters.Not long after the meeting began in Edinburgh, it was adjourned for about half an hour after a protester interrupted Rick Haythornthwaite's opening speech. Continue reading...

Though solar was initially incorrectly blamed for crisis, renewables have helped insulate Spain from gas price rises caused by war in Middle EastOne year ago today, all of Spain, and much of Portugal, suffered through a blackout of unprecedented scale and duration. In mere seconds, a cascading sequence of events burst through the grid and created Europe's first system black" event in recent memory.Traffic signals failed, mobile networks stopped working entirely, petrol stations could not pump fuel and supermarkets could not process payments. Madrid's metro came to a halt and people had to be pulled out of carriages. People were stunned because this had never happened in Spain," Carlos Condori, a 19-year-old construction sector worker, told AFP at the time. There's no [phone] coverage, I can't call my family, my parents, nothing: I can't even go to work." Continue reading...

US generated more power from renewables including solar and wind than gas last month in a firstDonald Trump has wielded the full might of his administration to crush the progress of clean energy, which he has called a scam" and stupid". But there are signs this assault is not going to plan.In March, the US generated more of its electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind than it did via gas, the first time clean energy has surpassed the planet-heating fossil fuel for a full month nationally, according to data from the Ember thinktank. Continue reading...

Climate group calls for urgent windfall tax on excess fossil fuel profits, as delegates tell Colombia conference their nations are sufferingThe Middle East oil and gas crunch will impose as much as a trillion dollars of additional costs on the global economy while petroleum companies rake in spectacular profits from elevated fuel prices, analysis has revealed.The uneven distribution of risk and reward comes amid rising concern that the US-Israeli attack on Iran is worsening inequality, poverty and hunger across a world that has become dangerously dependent on fossil fuels. Continue reading...

A new two-acre garden in memory of Queen Elizabeth II has opened to the public, providing a refuge for the city's flora and fauna in Regent's Park. From a wildflower meadow to swift boxes in a water tower, the space has been designed as an oasis of biodiversity Continue reading...

Case centers on glyphosate, pesticide used in Roundup and other products that has been linked to cancer in some studiesMembers of the US supreme court peppered lawyers for the former Monsanto Company with a barrage of questions over pesticide regulation on Monday, wrestling over whether federal law pre-empts state actions that permit consumers to sue companies for failing to warn of product risks such as cancer.The case, Monsanto v Durnell, centers on glyphosate - a weedkilling chemical used in the popular Roundup brand and numerous other herbicide products sold by the former Monsanto company, which is now owned by Germany's Bayer. Continue reading...

Continue reading...

On Monday, a public inquiry will reopen, nine years after the plan was proposed and a toxic local battle beganWhen Fidelma O'Kane retired more than a decade ago from her career as a social worker and lecturer, she thought she would be travelling and having a glass of wine and eating chocolate and reading books" while based in the quiet, hilly corner of rural County Tyrone where she has lived almost all her life.It didn't quite work out that way. Instead, an idle remark from a neighbour would set O'Kane on a path that would become an all-consuming mission. A mining company, the neighbour told her, was planning to drill for long-rumoured reserves of gold in the Sperrins, the low peatland mountain range in Northern Ireland where O'Kane's family has lived for generations. Continue reading...

The Ukraine war on our doorstep is a constant threat. Contaminated drinking water is a dangerous new twistIn the second week of March, the nature vlogger Ilie Cojocari went out to film the arrival of spring on the Nistru (Dniester) river, 70 metres away from his home in Naslavcea, a village bordering Ukraine on the northernmost point of Moldova. But as he approached the river he could smell the stench of oil rising up from the water and see dark spots floating on its surface. Something was wrong.Two days earlier, Russia had attacked Ukraine's Novodnistrovsk hydropower complex 15 miles upriver. Cojocari had been kept awake all night by the sound of shelling. No one slept in the [Moldovan] district of Ocnia that night," he told me.Paula Erizanu is a Moldovan journalist and writer based in ChiinuDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Campaigners say birds could die trying to access ancestral nests that were sealed during rail refurbishmentSome swifts returning to Britain to breed will be unable to access their ancestral nesting holes after they were blocked in a 7.5m refurbishment of a Derbyshire railway viaduct, campaigners say.Nature lovers had appealed to Network Rail to unblock three holes which were among at least nine swift nesting sites on the twin viaducts at Chapel Milton, on the edge of the Peak District. Continue reading...

The restructuring will close all regional offices, which manages 193m acres of land, roughly the size of Texas

Residents of Fleetwood say continuous foul smell from Transwaste site is causing illness and making life hellIn the week that many families went to the coast for the fresh sea air or the tang of fish and chips, visitors to one Lancashire resort inhaled a rather more unpleasant aroma.Welcome to Fleetwood," read the local newspaper headline. The town that smells of bin juice." Continue reading...

This week's best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Charity advises replacing seed and nut feeders, where birds gather, with small amounts of mealworms, fat balls or suetGarden birds should not be fed seeds and nuts over the summer months, the RSPB has said, in an attempt to reduce the spread of avian diseases.Bird lovers are being urged to take down their bird feeders between May and October to help birds such as the greenfinch, whose numbers have plummeted after the spread of trichomonosis, a parasitic disease transmitted more easily when birds cluster around feeders in the warmer months. Continue reading...

The National Trust's wetlands project officer has described the effect of four Eurasian beavers on the ecosystem as astonishing, a year after they were reintroduced into the wild in England for the first time in 400 years.Beavers were hunted to extinction in England in the 16th century and remained absent until a year ago, when a landmark project announced by the National Trust, Defra and Natural England released two pairs relocated from Scotland into a freshwater lake in the Purbeck Heaths nature reserve in Dorset. Since their release, the beavers have constructed a 35-metre dam, improving local habitats for plants, insects, amphibians, birds and bats. Trail cameras even captured the beavers playing with an otter, while a barn owl, a protected species in the UK, was also seen flying nearby.The project allows for the release of 10 to 25 adult beavers, with the next release expected to take place this autumn.

The US has invoked national security to remove protections for the endangered cetacean, of which only about 50 are leftSince before modern humans existed Rice's whales have been diving to the depths of the ocean to gorge on fat-rich fish while growing to leviathan proportions, their bodies spanning the length of a bus and weighing as much as as six elephants.Unfortunately for these grand creatures, their only home became a patch of the Gulf of Mexico that the oil and gas industry, much later, became highly interested in for drilling. Only about 50 of these baleen whales still exist on Earth, surrounded by clanging aquatic highways of boats and shifting drilling infrastructure. Continue reading...

The Reform UK leader's energy bill giveaway certainly grabs our attention - but it's a distraction from the real winners and losersYou can already imagine the video.A man stands in the middle of a suburban English street holding a wad of cash in his hands. Grinning at the camera he says: I'm about to pay this entire street's energy bills." Cut to gliding drone footage of the neighbourhood. The man knocks on a front door and a bewildered looking woman answers in a fleecy dressing gown. Congratulations, Carol. You've saved more than 1,000 this year!" High-energy electronic music swells to a climax as she gives him a hug. Then, a shot of the next neighbour receiving his prize, and another, and another, as a tally at the bottom right of the screen shows the total cash sum rising. Finally, the entire community is out on the street waving their hands with joy. Continue reading...

Fifty founder' bilbies were released in fenced breeding area in 2019 with the aim of establishing first wild population there in a century

Researchers are weaving Native practices with western methods to revive ecosystems and reclaim food sovereigntyI'm a glorified clam counter."So said Marco Hatch, a marine ecologist at Western Washington University and an enrolled member of the Samish Indian Nation. Hatch has been conducting surveys of mollusks growing in and around clam gardens in the Pacific north-west, as he collaborates with seven Indigenous communities to build or rebuild these rock-walled, terraced beaches once created and tended by their ancestors. Continue reading...

Exclusive: research finds Jackdaw field would provide only about 2% of current demand, and Rosebank only 1%Opening major new fields in the North Sea would make almost no difference to the UK's reliance on gas imports, research has shown.The Jackdaw field, one of the largest unexploited gasfields in the North Sea, would displace only 2% of the UK's current imports of gas, which would leave the UK still almost entirely dependent on supplies from Norway and a few other sources. Continue reading...

Citizen science data reveals early flowering, nesting and insect activity as global heating accelerate seasonal changeBluebells are flowering, swallows are returning and orange-tip butterflies are flying in what could become Britain's earliest recorded spring.Records for early spring occurrences are being smashed as 2026 looks to be the earliest this century for frogspawn laying, blackbirds nesting, brimstone butterflies emerging and hazel flowering, according to Nature's Calendar, which has logged citizen science records of seasonal change since 2000. Continue reading...

Datacentres directly competing' with possible residential builds near public transport, one council tells NSW inquiry, amid growing concerns

Proposal, a win for RFK Jr's Maha movement, is a first step' toward tackling plastic pollution, advocates sayThe Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed on Thursday to include microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants in drinking water for the first time, a step that could lead to new limits on those substances for water utilities.Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said the agency was responding to Americans who have worried about plastics and pharmaceuticals in their drinking water. The gesture also aims to hand a win to health secretary Robert FKennedy Jr's Maha movement, which for months has pressured Zeldin to further crack down on environmental contaminants. Continue reading...

We are at a critical point in the climate emergency and already struggling to meet emissions reduction targets. The UK government must hold its nerveWhile the UK is only marginally involved in the war in the Middle East in military terms, the ramifications for this country are still potentially huge. And nowhere more so than in the energy sector. It isn't a surprise, then, that commentary has focused on the impact potential policy interventions might have on the cost of energy to UK homes and businesses, and on whether the decisions the government takes will make the nation more - or less - energy-secure.The usual suspects in Reform and the Tory party have used the war as an excuse to renew demands that the North Sea be sucked dry of its remaining oil and gas, in order - they say - to end reliance on fossil fuel imports and to guarantee energy security. More sensible heads have argued that the North Sea basin is a field that is way past peak production, and that has only limited amounts of oil and gas left, and that energy security can only be reached if we move further and faster on renewables. Extraordinarily, the real reason no further significant exploitation of North Sea oil and gas is planned seems to have been entirely forgotten, or at least set aside.Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL. His next book - The Fate of the World: a History and Future of the Climate Crisis - is published in May Continue reading...

This week's best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Document shows partial felling last year, which led to legal action against Toby Carvery, was done by Ground ControlA mystery contractor who chainsawed an ancient oak in north London for the Toby Carvery restaurant chain has been identified by the Guardian, prompting more questions about the incident.The unauthorised partial felling of the 500-year-old oak a year ago on Friday in Whitewebbs Park, Enfield, prompted widespread public outrage and questions in parliament. Continue reading...

Continue reading...

Critics say exemption for fossil fuels exploits White House's self-made gas crisis', and could doom the rare Rice's whale

Merlin could disappear in worst-case scenario, with British isles facing ecological point of no return'The merlin, Britain's smallest bird of prey, is one of more than 200 species that will become extinct in the UK if action is not taken to curb emissions and unsustainable land use, a study has claimed.According to the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), there is a 20-year window in which decisions on climate and land use will determine the fate of dozens of Britain's native species. Continue reading...

Home to one of the world's largest deposits of freshwater, the Great Lakes region will soon host next-generation generators - just as prices are being hiked across the USSubmersible hydroelectric technology deployed across the Great Lakes could become a key cog in clean energy efforts, supporters say, amid surging electricity demand and costs.Home to one of the largest deposits of freshwater on the planet, the Great Lakes region has on its shores some of the largest cities in North America in Chicago, Toronto, Montreal and Detroit, where electricity demand is growing. While none of the five Great Lakes have significant tides or currents to fuel hydropower, several of the waterways that link the lakes do. Continue reading...

Brittlestars, sea anemones and a catshark among new-to-science species collected during expedition off the Queensland coast

Critics say president is locking into 20th-century energy systems even as his bet' on oil and gas isn't going so well'By attacking Iran and threatening to seize its oil while taking extraordinary measures to block clean energy back in the US, Donald Trump has inadvertently highlighted the dangerous volatility of the fossil fuel era, critics say.The US and Israel's bombardment of Iran and southern Lebanon has caused a humanitarian and environmental toll, with threats of further escalation set to add to these casualties as well as add more planet-heating emissions and destroy drinking water supplies. Continue reading...

A death rate of up to 90%, attributed to warming seas, is threatening the trade in Hiroshima prefecture, which produces most of the country's farmed oystersThe Kure oyster festival is doing a brisk trade in beer and grilled meat on sticks. But the longest queues are in front of the oyster stalls, where chefs shuffle piles of mottled shellfish across griddles, waiting for their hinges to ease and reveal their fleshy interiors.Nobuyuki Miyaoka, who is attending the festival with his son, daughter-in-law and their young children, likes his oysters steamed with sake and served with a few drops of tangy ponzu sauce. The local oysters were fine until this year," he says. They used to be a lot bigger ... look how small they are."Chefs prepare oysters at the Kure oyster festival. This year, local businesses and consumers say the shellfish have been scarce and smaller than usual Continue reading...

Government told to focus on transition to mix of wind, solar, tidal and nuclear energyMore drilling in the North Sea would do nothing to improve the UK's energy security, former military leaders have said, as a new analysis finds no fossil fuel importer is safe from chokepoints in the global supply chain.The government should focus on a rapid transition to a mix of wind, solar, tidal and nuclear energy to ensure the UK's future security, the former military leaders told the Guardian, as well as a programme of energy efficiency and a major renewal" of the electricity grid. Continue reading...

The war reveals Britain's exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices. More North Sea drilling will not shield households, building domestic green energy willWhat should Britain do when war in the Middle East sends energy prices soaring? If the strait of Hormuz were blocked for the month of fighting that Donald Trump predicts, British households could face another brutal cost of living shock. Goldman Sachs warns of prices at the pump rising to 2022 levels. That would put more than 50p on each litre in the tank. Prolonged disruption to global gas supplies could see energy bills in the UK rise by 900 to 2,500 a year. Such uncertainty strengthens the case for going big on clean energy.Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has grasped this reality. By contrast, the Conservatives and Reform UK are doubling down on domestic fossil fuel extraction. The debate is framed around a simple claim of energy security: drill more at home. But the argument is rhetorical. Britain might export a bit more crude and have a smidgen more gas. But it would still need to import refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG). Households would remain exposed to global energy shocks. Clean electricity, by contrast, cuts gas demand and reduces exposure to volatile markets. The political pressures are jobs, tax revenues and the economiesof Scotland and north-east England tied to a declining asset. Continue reading...