Environment | The Guardian

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...

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