Both cities are seeking ways to transport expanding populations without impacting their historic centres, yet the simplest solution is staring them in the faceSometimes politics really does overlook the obvious, and there’s a fine example just now in those two great centres of clear thinking and clogged traffic, Oxford and Cambridge. Here is the problem. The country wants, and badly needs, to build on these cities’ success in tech, bioscience and other industries: 129,000 new jobs and 135,000 new homes are planned in and around them over the next decade or so. But first you have to plan how to transport all the new people, and none of the usual answers works.Even if new roadbuilding were an answer in any city, it can’t be in these two. Their historic centres are inviolable, their electorates implacable. Gone, thank God, are the days when plans could be drawn up for a new highway through Christ Church Meadow. More buses? Both cities’ centres are already choked with them. Metros? Vastly expensive and disruptive, years to build, and couldn’t hope to serve most of the journeys people will need to make. Continue reading...

Four people have died seeking a bounty hidden in the Rockies, with only a riddle as a guide. As the casualties mount, the millionaire who buried the treasure insists it’s not a hoaxSacha Johnston was inching along a dirt road in a narrow canyon in northern New Mexico. “Just guide me,” Johnston said to her search partner, Cory Napier, who directed Johnston and her white Toyota 4Runner. “This road can be brutal.”The pair had come to this starkly beautiful place, at the base of the Sangre De Cristo mountains, to hunt for a treasure rumored to be worth upwards of $2m. Continue reading...

Minister says ‘we’d be mad not to’ mine Galilee basin, despite report showing steep price drop from 2020A senior federal minister has claimed new coal export figures strengthen the investment case for Adani’s Carmichael coalmine and the development of Queensland’s Galilee basin, but a report from his own department appears to show the opposite.The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science released a report on Monday that included projections for global commodity prices and volumes.

The intricately-woven webs of a mass colony of tent spiders create an eye-catching display in a nature reserve at Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia. Australian Museum arachnologist Graham Milledge told the ABC the webs were built over wet grassland and low-lying vegetation. 'At the top of the cone in the web is where the spider has its little retreat, that's where it sits waiting for prey and often there's a lot of detritus and leaves there to camouflage the spider'

Fury among wildlife groups as leaked letter to Congolese minister suggests Chinese zoos want gorillas and other endangered speciesMountain gorillas and other endangered species from the Democratic Republic of the Congo are at risk of being taken from the wild and exported to Chinese zoos, conservation groups have alleged.A leaked letter from the DRC’s environment minister to a Chinese company, apparently referring to a request for a number of rare species, has sparked outrage from wildlife charity Born Free and other organisations. Continue reading...

2 July 1918 The plant may be rare, but where it does occur it will choke up a small pond of shallow streamThe water soldier, even in the Fens, is a rare plant, and though at one time it occurred in scattered localities in Lancashire and Cheshire, it has vanished from nearly all its old stations. Most of the year the plant is submerged, but at the time of flowering it rises, a clump of stiff, aloe-like leaves, above the surface of the water. Where it does occur it is often plentiful, and will choke up a small pond or shallow stream, and this was the condition in which I found it, or rather was shown it by a local botanist, not many miles from Manchester. The pond, it is true, was small, but very little water was visible, so densely were the leaf-clumps crowded together. From the centre of many of the prickly-leaved rosettes rose the delicate white flowers. Locally, from its serrated leaves, it is called the water pine; but water aloe is an even more descriptive title. Griddon, who, by the way, does not mention this particular locality, states that it used to grow in the “Infirmary Pond,” so we may certainly reckon any water soldiers that appear in our local pits as old inhabitants.Related: The stranglers: the five plants threatening Britain's waterways Continue reading...

Head of Spanish Iberdrola welcomes UK’s scrapping of £1.3bn Swansea tidal projectThe boss of one of the world’s biggest energy companies has said governments should abandon expensive “moonshot” green technologies – such as the £1.3bn Swansea tidal project, axed last week – in favour of wind and solar.Ignacio S Galan, chair of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, which controls Scottish Power in the UK, said the decision on Swansea must see the end of support for what he described as unproven technologies that are a distraction and waste of resources. Continue reading...

Otley, Wharfedale: A pair of mute swans build their riverside nest in an exposed spot, untroubled by their urban neighbours

Reducing plastics when shopping for food, toiletries and travel products should be easy – so why is it so difficult?A few months ago, my partner and I went snorkelling off the coast of Indonesia. We dove off tiny deserted islands and swam in the deep with giant manta rays, but what I remember most vividly about that trip was not the stunning coral or dazzling array of colourful, curious fish; it was the sheer amount of garbage in the water.Shopping bags, plastic cups, toothpaste tubes, orange peel, all manner of human debris followed the currents; waves and waves of junk pooling in the shallow waters. In these parts of the reef, the water was cloudy and full of so much microscopic debris that it stung the skin. I remember watching a majestic giant turtle swim through the gloom as my head bumped against an old Coke bottle bobbing on the surface of the water. Continue reading...

High brown fritillary population rises due to harsh winter and sunny spring

The campaign to save our bees is something we can all get behind, so I decided to face my fears at an urban apiaryYou know what really makes a summer? Being besieged by flying insectoid life forms with venomous stingers. As a child, I discovered a wasps’ nest in the shed while trying to retrieve a lawnmower and it didn’t end well. Now a grown man, I’m terrified of anything airborne. The list of things that have triggered freak-outs includes flies, butterflies, poplar fluff and falling leaves, as well as the hair on my own neck. So, I am uncomfortable to be at Black Bee Honey, an apiary in Woodford, east London. I’m here to face my fears by putting my face next to things I’m afraid of: insects with wings and stings.The company’s co-founder, Chris Barnes, is swinging a smoker around like a Russian Orthodox priest, attempting to pacify the bees, or me. He explains that bees sting only to defend their hive, that stinging a human will kill them, that these bees have been bred to be docile. The thing is, he is wearing a full protective suit, as is everyone else around. “That sounds great,” I say. “But can I wear what you’re wearing? And you mentioned gloves. Where are they?” Continue reading...

Crews from across northern England deployed to tackle ‘rapidly developing’ blazesFirefighters from across the north of England and Midlands have travelled to Greater Manchester to help control fires that have destroyed at least 2,000 hectares (4,940 acres) of moorland over the past week.Crews from Cumbria, Tyne and Wear, Nottingham, Humberside and Warwickshire joined teams from Lancashire and Greater Manchester tackling fires in Saddleworth, east of Manchester, and on Winter Hill, north-west of Bolton. Continue reading...

The removal of outer garments is de rigueur in the city during an unbroken spell of high temperaturesA distinctive temperature scale seems to have evolved in Glasgow caused by recent extreme UK weather patterns. In other parts of Britain abnormally high temperatures such as those recorded over the last week or so are referred as a heatwave. In Glasgow we now call this “taps aff” weather. When the taps aff point has been reached it is universally deemed appropriate for men of all ages and sizes to remove their tops.West of Scotland climatologists have yet to pinpoint specifically at what point on the Celsius scale taps aff happens, but are believed to be carrying out tests. At the other end of the evolving Glasgow temperature scale is “bawbag” weather. Thus when the temperatures drop a Glaswegian might be heard to say to his chum: “I think we’re in for some real hurricane bawbag weather.” The term was coined in 2011 for the cyclone that Berlin scientologists had named Friedhelm. Bawbag was felt to be a more appropriate term in Glasgow because it conveyed a measure of defiance in the face of oncoming climactic adversity. Continue reading...

What goes in the blue bin, what goes in the yellow bin, and what do you do with pizza boxes?Recycling should be straightforward: paper goes in the blue bin; plastics, glass and metal in the yellow bin; dead plants in the green bin and everything else in the red bin – right?Except it’s not always quite that easy. What do you do with mixed packaging? How do you deal with neighbours doing the wrong thing? And what to do with pizza boxes? Continue reading...

Nurdin Topham is on a mission to tap the flavours of the plants and herbs we walk past in our cities. We joined him in east London‘Smell this!” Chef and wild food enthusiast Nurdin Topham is inhaling a lungful of shrub called pineappleweed, picked fresh from a stretch of east London formerly known as Murder Mile. He hands me a couple of yellow buds with an instruction to sniff; sweet fruitiness floats under my nose. Topham takes a chew. I gamely follow suit. The clue, it seems, is in the name: we’re eating what vaguely tastes like pineapple and feels a lot like chewing grass. “This is food,” he explains, as we ramble on, to forage for a lunch he will be cooking later.The future of food and our relationship with nature is at the core of Topham’s philosophy for what he calls “nourishing gastronomy”, a subject he will deliver a lecture on this week at FutureFest in London. He has two decades of experience in the field, first as a qualified nutritionist and personal development chef for Raymond Blanc, and later as head of NUR, his own Michelin-starred restaurant in Hong Kong. Continue reading...

Salad basics stop growing and hosepipe use is banned as 30C-plus temperatures continue

US communities near pellet mills complain of fumes while experts say burning wood is a ‘disaster’ for climate changeIt is touted as a smart way for Europe to reach its renewable energy goals. But try telling Lisa Sanchez thousands of miles away in America that burning wood chips is a form of clean energy.The bucolic charm of her rural home in the Piney Woods forest region of east Texas is undercut by the big German Pellets manufacturing plant just beyond the bottom of her garden. The German-owned plant is capable of producing 578,000 tons of wood pellets a year, which are destined to cross the Atlantic to satisfy a vibrant market for the product there. Continue reading...

Castlemartin, Pembroke: I thought about the brutal annihilation of its larger cousin the great auk. But I was worrying needlessly

Foreshadowed 100 gigawatt tender is off the scale of country’s energy needs but represents ‘brilliant statement of intent’, analysts sayIndia says it intends to launch a tender for 100 gigawatts of solar power, 10 times the size of the current largest solar tender in the world – another Indian project scheduled to open for bids next month.

Katharine Murphy talks to Fiona Simson, president of the National Farmers’ Federation, about how farmers attitudes towards climate change are evolving. Simson says dissenters need to ‘get out of the way’ of creating an energy policy framework for the future and calls on politicians to ‘stop picking winners’ and put their trust in the market. Plus, what’s the future for live exports and why more women are needed in politics

This rare species was only discovered in 1828. Now the population is enjoying a boomThe black hairstreak is a dark, elusive and rather plain little butterfly. And yet it inspires great passion, and not just because of its rarity.There’s something deeply restful and lovely about this midsummer insect, especially when it lets you creep close and admire it sunning itself on blackthorn. Continue reading...

Five-metre shark seen in area’s first confirmed sighting since fisherman caught one in 1976A great white shark has been spotted near Spain’s Balearic Islands for the first time in at least 30 years.Conservation workers saw the five-metre predator as it swam across Cabrera archipelago national park on Thursday morning. Continue reading...

We need an energy storage infrastructure, says Jim Waterton, the Swansea lagoon decision should be reviewed, argues Robert Hinton, while Dr Tim Lunel wants solar subsidies restoredIntermittency – in one word, the main problem facing many (not all) forms of renewable energy; in the UK, principally wind and solar, and now tidal (Hinkley Point C got the go-ahead despite its cost. So why not Swansea Bay? 27 June). So far, electricity from these renewable sources has been in modest amounts, and intermittency has been dealt with (I simplify, but only slightly) by backing-off gas-fired combined cycle (CCGT) plant which, together with nuclear, forms the backbone of the UK electricity generating system. When the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, CCGT plant is there to take the strain.But this simple strategy fails if wind, solar, and now tidal presume to take over this backbone role. Smart metering (affecting consumers’ usage patterns) and international power exchanges can help, but the main action has to come from energy storage and regeneration plant, involving a new infrastructure to supplement hugely the existing pumped storage capability. This is bound to have serious cost implications, and until this is openly acknowledged, direct comparison of projected MWh costs from any intermittent renewable source with corresponding MWh costs from non-intermittent new nuclear generation is fundamentally invalid, and likely to be badly misleading.

It’s time for the Treasury to allocate significant funding so the nation can reap the huge benefits of more people cyclingThe government has announced £1m of funding to help police forces across the UK crack down on close passing of cyclists by drivers, and to improve driving instructor training around cycling safety.Although the sum is small beer indeed in transport terms, split between two projects, poor driver behaviour is a key reason people are discouraged from cycling in the UK. If we can start to tackle the culture of poor driving, including at source with driving instructors, we could eliminate a major reason more people don’t cycle – but it needs more money. Continue reading...

Saddleworth fires will also exacerbate problems as the UK’s peatlands store huge amounts of carbon that they will releaseNorthern Europe should brace itself for more upland fires like the one on Saddleworth Moor this week as the climate changes and extreme weather events become more common, scientists have warned.As the army joined firefighters to tackle the blaze near Manchester and a second fire was reported on nearby upland, scientists said similar events are increasingly likely in future, with potentially devastating consequences for the environment and human health.

Northern Ireland Water to introduce hosepipe ban this weekend after rise in demandWater companies have urged UK households to conserve supplies as the country continues to bask in a near record-breaking June heatwave that has caused train tracks to buckle after reaching temperatures approaching 50C.

Flying pink flamingos, Hebridean red deer and a Sumatran tiger are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

Lake Palcacocha is swollen with water from melting ice caps in the Cordillera Blanca mountains. Below, 50,000 people live directly in the flood pathNestled beneath the imposing white peaks of two glaciers in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, the aquamarine Lake Palcacocha is as calm as a millpond. But despite its placid appearance it has become a deadly threat to tens of thousands people living beneath it as a result of global warming.A handful of residents of Huaraz, the city below the lake, can recall its destructive power. In 1941 a chunk of ice broke away from the glacier in an earthquake, tumbling into the lake. The impact caused a flood wave which sent an avalanche of mud and boulders cascading down the mountain, killing about 1,800 people when it reached the city. Continue reading...

New charity warns Britain’s largest butterfly could be lost within four decades as rising seas turn its habitat into saltmarsh

In industry where one-third of workers are immigrants, Ice’s largest raid at an Ohio plant strikes fear in local communities

Money will be spent on expanding an Interpol taskforce dedicated to investigating the gangs driving illegal deforestationThe Norwegian government has announced a pledge of 145m kroner (£12m) to help fight forest crime such as illegal tree clearances.The money will be shared by Interpol, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Rhipto Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses, which collects data on illegal logging. The funds will allow Interpol to expand its dedicated taskforce from six to 15 detectives. Continue reading...

Lower Benefield, Northamptonshire: The stubby little white specimen turns out to be my first concolorous mothNational Moth Night has inspired me to dust off my moth trap and indulge in a summer pageant of colourful insects. With some disappointment I clock the dropping temperatures and cleared sky with twinkling stars. Not a positive development. Clear, cold nights deter moths from taking to the wing. I consider hanging the trap back up, but decide a small haul of moths would be suitably charming. Continue reading...

Five-year report makes a case for how Aboriginal custodianship can revitalise ailing riversA “ground breaking” new plan to enshrine Aboriginal water rights in law and practice has been released, which gives governments a way to overturn “aqua nullius” and demands Aboriginal people have more say in how water is allocated and managed across Australia.The national cultural flows research project is the “unfinished business of national water reform,” Nari Nari man and chair of the Murray lower Darling river Indigenous nations (MLDRIN) Rene Woods said. Continue reading...

Water shortages cause alarm over crop yields and keeping livestock aliveWhile millions of Britons are enjoying the heatwave, the dry weather is causing problems for farmers who are concerned about their crops and livestock, forcing some into desperate measures to keep their cattle alive.Guy Smith, the deputy president of the National Farmers Union, said it was too early to predict a disastrous harvest, but every day of heat and lack of rain was likely to make it smaller.

Conservation scientists believe our current mass extinction crisis requires a far more ambitious agreement, in the style of the Paris Climate Accord. And they argue that the bill shouldn’t be handed just to nation states, but corporations too.

Oil spill disaster reduced biodiversity in sites closest to spill, report finds, as White House rolls back conservation measuresThe 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster may have had a lasting impact upon even the smallest organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have found – amid warnings that the oceans around America are also under fresh assault as a result of environmental policies under Donald Trump.Lingering oil residues have altered the basic building blocks of life in the ocean by reducing biodiversity in sites closest to the spill, which occurred when a BP drilling rig exploded in April 2010, killing 11 workers and spewing about 4m barrels of oil into the Gulf. Continue reading...

Acquisition of Chargemaster, with 6,500 charging points, praised as milestone towards cleaner motoringBP has bought the UK’s biggest electric car charging network, in the latest sign of major oil producers addressing the threat that low-carbon vehicles pose to their core business.The acquisition of Chargemaster, which has more than 6,500 charging points across the country, will begin to result in the deployment of fast chargers at BP’s 1,200 forecourts over the next year. Continue reading...

In this extract from Rising, Elizabeth Rush explains ‘sunny day flooding’ – when a high tide can cause streets to fill with water

Thailand has been swamped by waste from the west after Chinese ban on importsAt a deserted factory outside Bangkok, skyscrapers made from vast blocks of crushed printers, Xbox components and TVs tower over black rivers of smashed-up computer screens.This is a tiny fraction of the estimated 50m tonnes of electronic waste created just in the EU every year, a tide of toxic rubbish that is flooding into south-east Asia from the EU, US and Japan. Continue reading...

Failure to build energy-efficient homes and clean cars risks UK missing its carbon targets, says government’s climate adviserThe homebuilding and carmaking industries “should be ashamed” of their efforts to tackle global warming, according to the UK government’s official climate change adviser.Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), said housebuilders were “cheating” buyers with energy-inefficient homes and that motor companies were holding back the rollout of clean cars. Continue reading...

Poachers killed 800,000 birds on UK base in 2016 but 72% drop was recorded in last yearWhen Britain’s armed forces minister, Mark Lancaster, assumed office he was surprised by the amount of letters in his mailbag regarding an issue the military would not ordinarily address. One after the other spoke of the killing of migratory songbirds on Cyprus. Hundreds of thousands of robins, blackcaps, thrushes and other much-loved garden species were being illegally slaughtered by trappers on Ministry of Defence land. Was there nothing he could do?Lancaster, who served in Cyprus during a gap year commission in the army in 1987, resolved to right the wrong. He made good on the promise last weekend. Continue reading...

Reculver, Kent: For now, granite boulders the size of a Mini keep the tide at bay, but along the coast the sandstone cliffs are left vulnerableA church without a congregation, a lighthouse without a light, the twin towers of Reculver are a seashore emblem of solidity and transience. The fortress-like rectangularity of this imposing structure summoned me from miles away, only to find it was frontage to a roofless ruin.Related: Floods and erosion are ruining Britain’s most significant sites Continue reading...

If waste is burned for energy, recyclable material is lost forever. There are better solutionsThe vast recycling problem facing communities right around Australia has been a ticking time bomb.

Steve Robertson’s bonus stopped for two years after firm hit with £55m Ofwat fineThames Water will not pay its chief executive a bonus for the next two years and after that will link it to leak and pollution targets being met.Britain’s biggest water company was recently fined £55m by the watchdog Ofwat and ordered to pay £65m to customers for failing to adequately tackle leaks in 2017. It has warned it will miss its leak targets again this year. Continue reading...

Juru traditional owners say Adani has ignored demands to inspect “unauthorised” cultural assessments

The oil industry is building yet another pipeline - but Native American groups and progressive activists are fighting back

Lower costs and battery technology offer hope – but industry says it needs support“I’m 87% self-powered today. Yesterday I was 100%,” Howard Richmond said, using an app telling him how much of his London home’s electricity consumption is from his solar panels and Tesla battery.The retired solicitor lives in one of the 840,000-plus homes in the UK with solar panels and is part of an even more exclusive club of up to 10,000 with battery storage. Continue reading...

The rejected Welsh tidal power scheme is a missed opportunity on many fronts, says the chair of the planning inspectors who studied the proposalThe rejection by ministers of the proposed Swansea Bay tidal lagoon (Report, 26 June) must be the final nail in the coffin of what was once claimed would be “the greenest government ever”.When I and my fellow planning inspectors spent the best part of a year examining and reporting on both the principle and the detail of the project in Swansea, it was clear that this pathfinder project had important environmental, cultural and regeneration benefits. Continue reading...

Israel | Butterflies | Doughnuts at the cricket | Bra sizes | Morris MinorsTony Greaves asks for Israel to be treated like other states (Letters, 26 June) on the very day that Britain, after a wait of 70 years, treats Israel like other states with a first royal visit.

Part 1 of a report on the indigenous Siona people in the Putumayo region in the AmazonPlacido Yaiguaje Payaguaje, an indigenous Siona man, was standing right where his 80-something mother was blown apart by a land-mine. There was a crater about the size of a beach ball. Surrounding foliage had been shredded, and on some of the leaves and fronds you could still see the dynamite.This was a 20 metre, steepish climb down to the banks of the River Piñuña Blanco, deep in the Colombian Amazon. Placido’s mother had come here to fish in a lagoon nearby. It was a popular spot for singo, sábalo and garopa.