Environment | The Guardian

Pruitt was accused of a litany of corrupt practices, any one of which would have ended the career of an ordinary politicianAfter months of scandals, investigations and public protest, Scott Pruitt has finally resigned as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. During his relatively short time in the role, he was accused of a litany of corrupt practices, illegal activities and misuse of public funds, any one of which would have ended the career of an ordinary politician. Pruitt was far from ordinary, though. He had such an apparent disregard for government ethics and political norms, that many questioned whether he would ever leave office. But as CNN reported that Pruitt had kept a secret diary of meetings he didn’t want the public to know about because he thought it would “look bad”, his Teflon finally flaked away.Related: Scott Pruitt, Trump's embattled EPA chief, resigns after ethics scandals Continue reading...

Pruitt seemed indestructible as the administration cycled through resignations, with Trump standing by him even at the endTowards the end of his 2016 presidential election campaign, Donald Trump discovered a new slogan: “Drain the swamp!” He admitted being surprised at how well it went down with crowds at his rallies and kept repeating it. Continue reading...

Pruitt’s actions at the EPA have left a demoralized agency where staff fear their ability to protect public health is diminishedScott Pruitt, who has finally stepped down as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency after a long-rumbling corruption scandal, rose to public prominence on the back of a series of increasingly outlandish ethical controversies.Related: Scott Pruitt resigns: Trump's scandal-ridden EPA chief steps down Continue reading...

The recycling industry is in crisis, yet for most Australians it’s out of mind beyond the rattle of the recycling bin pickups each week. So what does this crisis really look like? Guardian Australia visited three processing sites to find out what happens to bins once they leave the kerbThe recycling industry has been in crisis mode in Australia since January when China, which previously bought 50% of the recycling we collect, implemented a ban that cut out 99% of what we used to sell.Recycling companies had relied on this export revenue stream to stay afloat – the amount of waste recycling we create exceeds the demand we have to buy and use within Australia. Without an outlet, some companies began stockpiling recycling or sending it straight to landfill. Continue reading...

Researchers say sea levels could also rise by six metres or more even if 2 degree target of Paris accord metTemperature rises as a result of global warming could eventually be double what has been projected by climate models, according to an international team of researchers from 17 countries.Sea levels could also rise by six metres or more even if the world does meet the 2 degree target of the Paris accord. Continue reading...

Alicia Hull on tidal energy being more efficient than nuclear, Liam O’Keeffe underlines its benefits, and Sue Roaf shines a light on solarIn his letter, Jim Waterton (30 June) protests too much. If tidal energy cannot be allowed without the possibility and costs of storage being certain, how is it that nuclear has been allowed when the costs and feasibility of storing the used fuel for countless lifetimes is equally unknown and likely to be much higher?He describes tidal energy as intermittent, when it is regular and very suitable as a base power source. In contrast, he describes nuclear power as consistent when this is far from the truth. Quite apart from their hopeless record on delivery dates, rising costs and concern that they will work, they’re also offline from time to time. The station at Sizewell is offline for maintenance for five to six weeks every 18 months. By November last year there had been 16 planned outages. But there had also been unplanned outages when dangerous faults have been identified. Continue reading...

CEO says earlier date would ease investment decisions and shift consumer attitudesShell, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies, has backed calls for the UK to bring forward its 2040 ban on new petrol and diesel car sales.

IUCN fears planet is entering sixth wave of extinctions with research from Australia revealing more risks to reptilesMore than 26,000 of the world’s species are now threatened, according to the latest red list assessment of the natural world, adding to fears the planet is entering a sixth wave of extinctions.

A pied crow's hearty greeting at Knaresborough Castle in North Yorkshire has been captured on film by two visitors. Lisa and Mark Brooks heard the bird chattering inside the castle grounds and started filming.'I found it absolutely hilarious. It must be a local, it has a proper Yorkshire accent. We were there for 15 minutes and it switched between saying ‘darling’ and ‘love’. Other people started coming over and were just in shock,' says Lisa Brooks.

As unions warn of serious injuries, plans to take speed limits off the lines at pig plants are causing anxietyAmputations, fractured fingers, second-degree burns and head trauma are just some of the serious injuries suffered by US meat plant workers every week, according to data seen by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.US meat workers are already three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker, and pork and beef workers nearly seven times more likely to suffer repetitive strain injuries. And some fear that plans to remove speed restrictions on pig processing lines – currently being debated by the government – will only make the work more difficult.

Scientists looking to replace oil as the source of the world’s plastic are harnessing everything from wood-eating bugs to chicoryNew bioplastics are being made in laboratories from straw, wood chips and food waste, with researchers aiming to replace oil as the source of the world’s plastic.

Activists also target valley named for advocate of extermination amid nationwide fight to reject legacy of racism Continue reading...

Exclusive: Queensland government must rule on application to cease work around Abbot Point coal terminal

Crook, County Durham: Pholcus has a reputation for preying on other spiders, by entering their webs and vibrating, imitating struggles of a snared flyWhen I leaned the steps against the conservatory wall and climbed, my brush loaded with paint, it could so easily have ended in tragedy.

Ferries cancelled and warnings issued after thick bank of fog rolls into cityFlights and ferry services were cancelled after thick fog covered Sydney Harbour on Thursday morning. Sydneysiders shared photos of the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and other landmarks as they disappeared from sight.

No 2 seed Caroline Wozniacki visibly struggled with swarm during her shock defeat

Ruth Chalmers of Greener UK supports George Monbiot’s call for better environmental protectionGeorge Monbiot is right to argue that much of our wildlife is in peril and that independent environmental bodies need enough money to do their job (As the state is dismantled, who will save Britain’s wildlife?, 4 July). Declines in wildlife have coincided with significant funding cuts to organisations such as Natural England. The government has recently pledged to set up a new environmental body, a green watchdog, to “hold the powerful to account” on maintaining protections and standards. While this is welcome, there remain questions over its independence and funding. The watchdog will fall at the first hurdle if its budget is not protected from ministerial meddling, especially as much of the new body’s focus will be on holding the government to account. A ring-fenced budget, provided and held by parliament and not government, will help, as well as ensuring operational independence. Only then can we be assured that government is truly committed to enforcing green laws after Brexit.

The northern white rhino is essentially extinct – just two females remain – but new research paves the way for its resurrectionThe first rhino embryos have been created in a test tube and could help save the northern white rhino, which is essentially extinct.There are just two northern white rhino (NWR) females left alive. The last male, called Sudan, died in March in Kenya, meaning the subspecies is doomed to die out unless the new IVF techniques bear fruit. Continue reading...

‘Striking association’ found between nine-year-old’s hospital admissions and local spikes in air pollutionThe repeated hospital admissions of a girl who died in an asthma attack at the age of nine show a “striking association” with spikes in illegal levels of air pollution around her home in London, legal documents have revealed.Ella Kissi-Debrah, from Hither Green, near the capital’s busy South Circular Road, experienced seizures for three years prior to her death in February 2013. Her family are calling for a new inquest into her death following fresh evidence that air pollution was a contributory factor. Continue reading...

A carbon tax and dividend system could usher in an era of clean energy independence

New data suggests worst cars are now 32 times more polluting than the best – risking all diesels being banned from cities, say expertsUltra-dirty new diesel engines are being sold alongside ultra-clean models in the UK, according to new data, leaving car buyers facing what experts call a “nightmare”.On-the-road tests by testing firm Emissions Analytics found that new models of Mercedes-Benz CLS, Seat Arona and Citroen DS 7 produced tiny amounts of pollution, up to 75% below the official EU limit. Continue reading...

Conservationists criticise environment minister for pushing strategy that affects threatened speciesJosh Frydenberg has challenged Western Australia over its management of sharks, proposing the state pay for a network of satellite-linked baited drumlines to protect high-traffic beaches.Frydenberg said 176 of the Smart (shark management alert in real time) drumlines could be deployed along 260km of WA’s 12,000km coastline, covering both Perth beaches and popular surf beaches in the southwest. Continue reading...

Tidal power is the only renewable source derived from the moon. Now an extraordinary array of devices promise to unlock this vital energy potentialUsing giant kites, blades and paddles, and mimicking pogo sticks, blowholes and even the human heart, groups around the world are on the cusp of harnessing the colossal power of the oceans.

Prees Heath, Shropshire: Because of callous exploitation by collectors, this location was long kept secret but conservation work has helped the butterflies. Now there are clouds of them“Silver-studded,” said the man hunched over his phone, pointing at a patch of red fescue grass. “Clouds of ’em.” Without looking up, he waved his arm over the common of Prees Heath. A stiff breeze ruffled the grass and carried the drone from surrounding trunk roads as sunlight flashed through scudding clouds. The day was as blue and silver-studded as the butterflies. Plebejus argus, the silver-studded blue butterfly, has its last outpost in the English Midlands here.Plebejus suggests commoner and argus is perhaps keeping watch, but like the dwellers of many heathland commons, life for the butterflies here hung by a thread. Because of callous exploitation by collectors in the past, this location was long kept secret but conservation work to restore the heathland has helped the butterflies, and now there are waymarkers pointing them out. Continue reading...

Decision to end program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions puts Ontario in line for showdown with federal governmentOntario’s new rightwing government has ended a carbon pricing policy aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Canada’s most populous province.The move to scrap the cap-and-trade program puts the provincial Conservative government – led by Doug Ford – directly at odds with the federal government’s bid to ensure provinces have a price on carbon in place by the end of 2018. Continue reading...

Commingled bins cause contamination. Is it time to go for separate bins for glass and paper?It was supposed to be the more efficient solution. Now as governments and local councils search for answers to Australia’s unfolding recycling crisis, the household yellow bin has emerged as both the prime culprit and a potential remedy.The recycling industry has been in crisis mode since the beginning of the year. On 1 January, China stopped accepting 99% of Australia’s exported recycling due, in part, to their strict new rules on contamination.

Kristin Mink approached head of US Environmental Protection Agency while holding her son and listed reasons he should resign“Hi! I just wanted to urge you to resign,” the schoolteacher Kristin Mink said as she approached Scott Pruitt at a Washington DC restaurant on Monday, apparently unfazed by Pruitt’s lunch partner and two security guards.“This is my son,” Mink told the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency while holding her two-year-old in her arms. Continue reading...

It’s time to clean up agriculture and adopt a non-chemical farming policy, says Georgina DownsSo the head of Syngenta, the world’s biggest pesticide maker, urges the continued use of pesticides in agriculture (Pesticide maker says curbs would lead to food crisis in 10 years, 18 June). This is hardly breaking news. Can anybody really be surprised at such a stance from any of the companies that produce these chemicals when their primary concern is to protect profits and to keep pesticides being used.Considering sales of pesticides in the UK each year are worth about £627m and the world pesticides industry has been valued at $58bn, this is very big business with powerful, vested interests. Continue reading...

Parliament looking at whether Australia’s regulations allow poached ivory and horns to be passed off as antiquesAustralia’s failure to regulate the sale of elephant ivory and rhino horns could be contributing to the demise of the animals, a parliamentary committee has heard.The committee is looking into the country’s regulations and whether they allow newly-poached ivory and horns to be passed off as antiques. Continue reading...

British consumers eat chicken twice a week. Are large farms the only way forward?

Only 40% of waterways surveyed were in a good ecological state – with England one of the worst offendersThe vast majority of Europe’s rivers, lakes and estuaries have failed to meet minimum ecological standards for habitat degradation and pollution, according to a damning new report.Only 40% of surface water bodies surveyed by the European Environmental Agency (EEA) were found to be in a good ecological state, despite EU laws and biodiversity protocols. Continue reading...

Raveningham, Norfolk: Soon my yellow shirt is smothered in tiny black dots, and across the field there must be millions of pollen beetles“Just passionate about life” is how Jake Fiennes, manager at this Yare valley estate, defines his approach to his job. It is also the phrase he uses to dodge my question about whether he’s a farmer or an environmentalist. For him the two are inextricably fused.After haring across the valley on his tipoff, I find him combining both roles as he contemplates a field of rape. The 10-hectare plot looks commonplace until I log into the cloud of birds swirling overhead. Had I been here earlier I’d have seen 500 but, as it is, many scores of swifts and house martins swarm above the field. Together they cruise down and spire through the top of the crop, threading and rethreading it in an orgy of hunting. Continue reading...

Simon Hodgson of Forest Enterprise England says broadleaved trees, including oak, are still seen as a strong part of the country’s homegrown timber supplyRe your article (‘There’s no oak left in England, just no more’, 28 June), the Forestry Commission in England over the past eight years has planted almost 1.7m oak trees (on top of those that we encourage to grow naturally from self-set acorns), the vast majority with the aim to supply high-quality timber and all in places expertly selected by our professional foresters to see them thrive. We see broadleaved trees, including oak, as a strong part of our homegrown timber supply and last year we saw record prices paid for our hardwoods. Yes, there will always be a greater emphasis on conifer trees for timber supply, but to say almost nothing is happening for oak is unfair. This is a country that cares about, and is committed to, expanding resilient forests.

Joint ticket of Jonathan Bartley and Siân Berry favourite to lead after Caroline Lucas steps downThree sets of contenders have put themselves forward to become the next leaders of the Greens, it was announced on Monday, with the joint ticket of Jonathan Bartley and Siân Berry seen as the strong favourite to take over in the absence of Caroline Lucas.

James Gigg, from Dorset, was found guilty of overstocking his henhousesA chicken farmer has been given a suspended jail sentence for falsely claiming that eggs produced in crowded henhouses were free-range.Eggs from James Gigg’s farm in Dorset were sold to shops and delicatessens that marketed them to customers as free-range. Continue reading...

Environmental campaigners appear in London’s high court to oppose UK Oil and Gas’s attempt to ban protests at three UK sitesSix environmental campaigners have taken legal action to overturn a broad injunction which is being sought by an energy firm against protesters.The group went to the high court in London on Monday to oppose the injunction which is being sought by UK Oil and Gas (UKOG). Continue reading...

Botched tender was for the disposal of materials at 12 UK sites including DungenessThe UK government has been forced to take a multibillion-pound nuclear cleanup contract back into public ownership, after a botched tender to the private sector landed the taxpayer with a £122m bill.The government will take over the decommissioning of Britain’s 12 Magnox sites, including the former nuclear power stations at Dungeness in Kent and Hinkley Point in Somerset. Continue reading...

Hot weather saw solar briefly take over from gas as the number one energy sourceBritain’s heatwave has helped break several solar power-generation records, and over the weekend the renewable energy source briefly eclipsed gas power stations as the UK’s top source of electricity.While new solar installations have virtually flatlined over the past year, a run of largely cloudless days has seen a series of highs for power generation by the sector. Continue reading...

Like opposing civil rights and gay marriage, climate denial will drive voters away from the GOPThe Republican Party is rotting away. The problem is that GOP policies just aren’t popular. Most Americans unsurprisingly oppose climate denial, tax cuts for the wealthy, and putting children (including toddlers) in concentration camps, for example.The Republican Party has thus far managed to continue winning elections by creating “a coalition between racists and plutocrats,” as Paul Krugman put it. The party’s economic policies are aimed at benefitting wealthy individuals and corporations, but that’s a slim segment of the American electorate. The plutocrats can fund political campaigns, but to capture enough votes to win elections, the GOP has resorted to identity politics. Research has consistently shown that Trump won because of racial resentment among white voters. Continue reading...

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...