Environment | The Guardian

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 11 May 1916Nowhere, surely, do the bluebells grow more luxuriantly or look more ravishingly beautiful than they do under the beeches in the grounds of the Queen’s Cottage at Kew. Here the varying thicknesses of sheltering boughs make varying shades of colour in the sea of flowers - now deep, now pale, now lilac of the most warm and tender hue. It is the most fugitive colour to catch and describe, but it hangs in the memory to solace and encourage. It is like a butterfly’s wing. When you get the first glimpse of it through the trees on a sunny day, it seems incredible. Looked at close, each fluted bell seems one colour; pale or bright, it is blue. But the bracts are red and the effect in mass is shot, and now one and now the other of the two colours prevails.The sunlight streams in shafts between the tree-boles or drips in golden rain through the young foliage; the wide grass tracks are strewn with a warm brown carpet made of the outer husks of the beech leaves; the squirrels flicker from branch to branch; the air is full of the song of birds and the perfume from a million bells. Here and there Stars of Bethlehem look like twenty-branched candlesticks, set to celebrate the thanksgiving service of the spring. Continue reading...

New UK government tests confirm that diesel cars produce a lot more air pollution in real-world driving when compared with the legal tests. Those sold since 2009 emitted six times more nitrogen oxides, on average.Compared with the stricter standards applied to petrol cars, the average diesel sold between 2009 and 2015 emitted 19 times more nitrogen oxides. Continue reading...

UN Economic and Social Council says Britain has not met its obligations to discuss the impact of nuclear accident with neighbouring countriesThe British government has run into a major new problem with the Hinkley Point C nuclear project, with a United Nations committee ruling that the UK failed to consult European countries properly over potential environmental risks.

To celebrate naturalist’s 90th birthday, we asked Guardian readers to share how he’s shaped their livesI like watching all of his wildlife and nature documentaries. He is my favourite guy. I like that he gets to see lots of rare animals. He saw a bird that could make a noise like a chainsaw. My favourite moment is when he went to Argentina to see the giant dinosaur, the titanosaur. Continue reading...

Of all his amazing experiences, the television legend recalls his first dive on the reef as the most memorable. But it’s dying before our eyesThe patron saint of quality television is 90 years old today. When his Great Barrier Reef series was broadcast at the start of the year, it was reported that this was likely to be his last series, or at least his last made on location. But it’s difficult to believe David Attenborough won’t always be around. For most people who grew up in 20th-century Britain, he is not just a national treasure but a permanent fixture. But then, that’s what we thought about the Great Barrier Reef.Just before the reef series was broadcast, Attenborough told a journalist that his first dive on the reef is the moment in his career he remembers most vividly: “Suddenly, this amazing world with a thousand things you didn’t know existed is revealed right in front of you, all wonderful colours and shapes. On land, the rainforest is comparable – but the difference is, you can walk for a day and see absolutely nothing. ‘Where are all these bloody monkeys they are always on about?’ But on a reef you see everything immediately.” Continue reading...

Designer Dan Vo is a proponent of the zero-waste movement within the fashion industryAt first appearances, Dan Vo’s new range of wool jackets for men appear to be pieces of well-made clothing with the price tag to match. Behind that appearance however is a precise method of design, where every part of the jacket has been cut exactly from a piece of fabric in a jigsaw pattern to ensure there is no waste of material in making it.Vo, a Scotland-based fashion designer, has designed a coat in which the uncut arms, collar, front, back, pockets and other sections all fit together perfectly on the piece of fabric. When they are cut out to make the jacket, she can then avoid wasting material, as is typically the case when conventional coats are made. Continue reading...

In his wonderfully honest memoir cum manifesto Tim Winton traces how he came to revere the natural world he grew up in – and long to preserve itIsland Home is Tim Winton’s insightful and vibrant testament to what it is to be a non-indigenous Australian living in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Less than 3% of Australia’s population can trace their ancestry in the country to a time that predates photography. Despite up to 60,000 years of continuous human habitation, it is still the landscape that leaves the strongest impression. Australia is “a place where there is more landscape than culture… Everything we do... is still overborne and underwritten by the seething tumult of nature”.Related: Interview: Tim Winton Continue reading...

When photographer Levon Biss turned his lens on the insects his son was collecting in the garden, it opened up a miniature world in which art meets science to dazzling effectTwo years ago, exhausted by the frantic pressures of commercial portraiture, photographer Levon Biss was searching for a way to relax. His son Sebastian, then six, found the answer in their back garden. “My boy likes insects,” says Biss. “He’s always in the garden trying to find them and play with them. I started shooting insects he’d caught, so that he could see them clearly and be proud of finding them.” Making detailed portraits of insect specimens proved to be the perfect antidote to the trigger-happy, “disposable” photography that Biss feels is the current fashion. “I wanted a project that made me think, that was a challenge,” he says, and he gradually developed a technique so specialised and laborious, only a photographer of extreme patience and dedication could sustain it.First, the pinned insect is mounted on an adapted microscope-stand in front of a camera with a macro lens. Biss then divides the insect into 30 sections, to be photographed separately at close range. “When you get to this magnification,” he explains, “the depth of field is so shallow, there’s only a minute plane of focus.” To render, for instance, a whole wing-casing in focus, it must be photographed around 750 times, with each photo taken 10 microns apart. Those 750 images are then painstakingly compiled into a composite, using a variety of sophisticated software. Continue reading...

Police arrest 66 people after climate change activists block train tracks and entrance to Newcastle harbour as part of global Break Free From Fossil Fuels actionsPolice have arrested 66 people in anti-fossil fuel protests in the Newcastle, home to Australia’s biggest coal export port.Hundreds of kayaks and boats blocked the entrance to Newcastle harbour in an attempt to stop coal ships from leaving or entering. Another group blocked train tracks used to transport coal on the Sandgate Bridge in the city’s north west. Continue reading...

A look back at the best known, and not so well known, achievements of Sir David Attenborough to mark his 90th birthday on Sunday. Attenborough influenced more than just nature documentaries, giving the green light to Monty Python and live snooker while head of a fledgling BBC2. He also has a menagerie of species named after him Continue reading...

Across central Africa, militias have turned the savannah into killing fieldsBrigadier Venant Mumbere Muvesevese, a 35-year-old father of four, became the 150th ranger in the last 10 years to be killed protecting lowland gorillas, elephants and other wildlife in Virunga national park last month. He and his young Congolese colleague, Fidèle Mulonga Mulegalega, were surrounded by local militia, captured and then summarily executed.Related: Burning the ivory is just the beginning Continue reading...

Virunga national park’s warden credits rangers with keeping mountain gorillas and visitors safe despite conflict fuelled by plunder of natural resourcesA ranger in Virunga national park has a 44% chance of suffering a violent death during their career, the highest rate of service deaths for any national park in the world. Yet, of the 34 rangers who have lost their lives since I was appointed as Virunga’s warden in 2008, 27 were killed protecting civilians and not the park’s wildlife.Over the years, a ranger’s responsibility – they are required to uphold the law across Congo’s vast wilderness areas – has stretched them beyond the traditional function of protecting wildlife. Instead, Virunga’s rangers have been placed at the frontline of a deeply complex conflict which has been described by Oxfam as the greatest human tragedy since the second world war, and which has led to the deaths of more than six million civilians. Continue reading...

Russia cannot be allowed to block this vital plan to protect the oceansThe science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke once observed that our planet has been given a singularly inappropriate name. We should not call it Earth, he observed. We should call it Ocean.It is a well made point. The one truly remarkable feature of our world is not its solid interior but the presence of a great layer of liquid water that stretches across much of its surface: our oceans. Thanks to them, Earth resembles a large, blue marble when viewed from space. By contrast, the solar system’s other planets consist of globes of rock or giant balls of gas. We live in a blue world of water that provided homes for the evolution of early livings beings and that continues to nurture us today. We owe our existence and our survival to our oceans and we should take care to protect them. They may cover 360 million square kilometres of Earth’s surface, but that represents only the thinnest of coats on our planet, one roughly equivalent to the skin that protects an apple. Continue reading...

The Ross Sea is the last intact marine ecosystem on EarthOver the next few weeks, a discreet but vital diplomatic campaign will be launched to try to save one of the most remote regions of the world: the Ross Sea in Antarctica.Marine conservationists, who have been pressing to set up a no-fishing zone for several years, say it is now paramount that their plan to create a 1.25 million square kilometre “no take” area in the Ross Sea is successful. They believe failure would seriously jeopardise future plans to protect the polar regions, which are now bearing the brunt of global warming. Continue reading...

Rather than hold back the river, this Oxfordshire home allows water to flow under the house and drain back out againJoanna and Martin O’Callaghan, 58-year-old chartered surveyors, married for 30 years and parents of two, are showing strong signs of being middle-aged hipsters. The living room wall of their newly built larch-clad house in the south Oxfordshire village of Sutton Courtenay is lined with original 1980s singles by Prince, the Jam, the Smiths, the Specials and Grace Jones. A woodburner roars away in the centre of a vogueishly “zoned” rather than fully open-plan living space. Taking pride of place in the garden are neat stacks of copper beech logs – the result of a new wood-chopping hobby.The biggest problem was that it was a zone-three flood plain – but that is also what makes the site so alluring Continue reading...

A legal case will consider if the emissions of 50 fossil fuel companies violate the human rights of those hit by extreme weatherCan Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP be held accountable for the vulnerable communities most affected by climate change? It’s a question a legal case in the Philippines could answer.Last month, lawyers for the petitioners met with the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHR), a constitutional body tasked with investigating human rights violations. Their goal was to identify expert witnesses for a hearing into the liability of 50 of the biggest fossil fuel companies for violating the human rights of Filipinos as a result of catastrophic climate change. Continue reading...

At £25,000 it’s being hailed as an ‘affordable’ option, and an astonishing 400,000 have been ordered. But is it worth the asking price?It’s being marketed as the model that will finally make electric cars mainstream. To get one you will need a £1,000 deposit, and then have to wait for at least two years before it is delivered. But that hasn’t deterred enthusiastic motorists. So far 400,000 people worldwide have pre-ordered the hi-tech, super-stylish and (for some countries) “affordable” Tesla Model 3, a figure unheard of in the auto industry. So what’s such a big deal? Continue reading...

Llangranog, Ceredigion For joyful dancing delight, for the palpable sense of fun and mischief, the raven is my choiceWind and wave hurl against the cliff, roar through the inlet, spinning white rosettes of spume in a vortex, a wavering pale column that snakes and twists into the air and bends landwards. A raven quartering the pasture above accepts the opportunity for play. He soars high, slipping the buffets of the gale, then folds his wings, drops like a dark stone into the white heart of the spray before rebounding and diving once more.His mate arrives, scolding tersely at the lateness of her dinner. Four choughs come squealing along the cliff edge. Her impatience set aside, she joins him in harrying them away. The air-mastery of these birds is breathtaking. Peregrine, goshawk, merlin, eagle – each is impressive in its way. But for joyful dancing delight, for the palpable sense of fun and mischief, the raven is my choice. From the path round Pendinaslochtyn I watch through a glass as they bully the choughs off their territory, then careen swiftly back along the wind. Continue reading...

Brush-tailed bettong, three-toed snake-tooth skink, swift parrot and types of orchid and albatross listedNearly 50 new species of flora and fauna have been added without fanfare to the federal government’s list of threatened species, including nine that are critically endangered.Among the species to be added to the list under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act were the brush-tailed bettong (endangered), the three-toed snake-tooth skink (vulnerable), the swift parrot (upgraded from endangered to critically endangered), and several types of orchid and albatross. Continue reading...

As another federal election looms, we need to keep in mind that violence and violent imagery do not prove passion for a nationLet’s redefine Australian patriotism.It’s time, because on the eve of a two-month long federal election campaign, we’re about to be subject to all manner of evocations from public figures about their advancement of the national interest and their love of their country. Continue reading...

Walter Micklethwait’s award-winning hut-turned-distillery in Scotland did not have change-of-use consent, it has emergedIs a shed still a shed if it is also a piano bar, a distillery and a small farm shop? Highland council will have to decide after it emerged that the recent winner of Shed of the Year did not have planning permission to change from a disused hen coop to a small enterprise of gin-making and egg-selling.Walter Micklethwait won the award in 2015 for transforming his dilapidated old wooden hut into a wild west-style saloon, farm shop and fully functioning Crossbill gin distillery.

Capacity market scheme to keep power stations on standby for peak demand could add £38 a year to each household billThe government has been accused of burying bad news during an election period after publishing a report (pdf) saying an emergency scheme to keep the lights on could add £38 a year to each household bill.

As flames rip through Alberta, we look at how putting out small fires can help to fuel increasingly catastrophic events as our climate gets hotter and drierBy dousing small, regular fires, forest managers are creating the conditions for cataclysmic events, scientists have said.Fires in temperate forests are generally increasing in size and area. This is partly because of climate change. Fire seasons in many parts of the world are getting longer and drier. Continue reading...

Letter calls for rapid shift to renewable energy after natural wonder affected by worst coral bleaching event yet seenTourism operators have broken their silence about the worst crisis ever faced by the Great Barrier Reef, with more than 170 businesses and individuals pleading with the Australian government to take urgent action to tackle climate change and ensure the reef survives.Related: Money trumpeted in budget for Great Barrier Reef previously announced Continue reading...

For more than 100 years, tourists and photographers have flocked to America’s national parks. Tim Dowling salutes the spectacular lakes, canyons – and rangers• America’s national parks in picturesSome years ago, my family and I paid a visit to the Rainbow Bridge national monument in Utah. It’s a natural stone arch, roughly the same height as the Statue of Liberty, and so remote that it wasn’t located by white people until 1909. It used to require a desert hike of several days to get to the bridge, but ever since the dam turned the Glen Canyon into Lake Powell, it’s only a two-mile stroll from a convenient landing dock. When we arrived, no one was around, apart from a park ranger stationed on the path, waiting for us, ready to answer any questions we might have, and to ask us to refrain from walking under the arch, because it is a site of tremendous religious significance for several Native American tribes.This federal employee standing in the middle of the desert – engaging, articulate, genial – seemed as much a monument as the bridge itself. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who enjoyed his job so much. We took turns posing for photographs wearing his hat. Continue reading...

Photographers have been inspired by the majesty of America’s national parks since they were founded more than a century ago• Tim Dowling hits the road Continue reading...

Re-use of spaces is the sustainable solution to overflowing graveyards, if done sensitively, says one of Britain’s biggest cemeteriesOne of Britain’s biggest cemeteries is leading the way on a solution to the nationwide shortage of grave spaces that’s reaching crisis levels.Experts say finding ways to stop cemeteries overflowing is vital, but the most effective way of doing so – re-using graves – challenges some people’s deeply held beliefs about burial. Continue reading...

Jonathan and Angela Scott: After the ivory burn, it’s up to all of us to make sure the pledges made there are honouredPeople have always been smitten by the beauty of elephant ivory, as I discovered for myself while travelling overland from London to Johannesburg in 1974.I am not exactly sure where I bought the small ivory carving that would haunt me in years to come. I think it was Kisangani (formerly Stanleyville), 2000 km upstream from the mouth of the mighty Congo River, home during the 1880s to Mohammed Bin Alfan Murjebi alias Tipu Tip, the infamous Zanzibari who traded ivory and slaves. Continue reading...

American alligators, sea stars and endangered Saharan Addax are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world Continue reading...

Raging wildfires have brought an ill-informed focus on this quintessentially Canadian place, which had a character long before the extraction plantsFort McMurray is a real place, not a Dante-esque metaphor for hell, despite the wildfires currently raging, which has forced its entire evacuation.An urban service area at the heart of the municipality of Wood Buffalo in north-eastern Alberta, one of Canada’s western provinces and currently in a state of emergency, it is not some frontier gold rush town huddled under a blanket of perpetual snow. It is not a work camp, although different work and service camps located at the mining sites, from 20 to 100 miles away, circle it. And it is not actually very far north in Canadian terms: the boreal forest just nudges the edge of the near north, and the far and the extreme north (yes, Canada has a near, far, and extreme north) are much farther beyond. It lies roughly between the longitudes of Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and no one would dare to call either Edinburgh or Aberdeen remote. Continue reading...

Ahead of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the national parks, the US Postal Service has issued 16 stamps that depict the beauty and diversity of these protected areas. The stamps collectively tell the story of the parks, from the glaciers of Alaska to the Everglades of Florida Continue reading...

Microbe populations make up 11-31% of living matter in the ocean seabed, but decline significantly as oceans warm

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox Continue reading...

Photographs from the Eyewitness series Continue reading...

Australia’s environment minister denies he failed to consider impact of a coal mine on the Great Barrier Reef, court documents showThe federal environment minister has argued in court that coal from Australia’s largest coalmine would have no “substantial” impact on climate change and as a result he did not need to consider whether it would affect the Great Barrier Reef.The Australian Conservation Foundation challenged Greg Hunt’s approval of Adani’s Carmichael mine, alleging he failed to consider the impacts the burning of the coal from the mine would have on climate change and hence on the Great Barrier Reef. Continue reading...

Eight-year-old male primate will leave Perth zoo for sanctuary on Indonesian island of Sumatra where, at his own pace, he will be releasedNyaru has been learning to fast between meals. On Tuesday the eight-year-old male orangutan will leave his enclosure in Perth zoo for the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where he will be released into the wild.An erratic feeding schedule, intended to mimic the “boom and bust” cycle of natural fruit availability, is one of the ways zookeepers have helped him to prepare. Continue reading...

Litchfield Down, Hampshire Just here the downs are a rolling sea of earth and flint – and the contraption sits atop the ridge like a ship run agroundEmerging from a stand of Scots pine at the crest of the down, I stumble across a silent monolith of steel and timber. On a base of low concrete walls there sits what was once a piece of clanking, many-chambered machinery. Much taller than I and metres long, it had riddled and sorted and spat under the power of the rusting engine embedded in a brickwork cradle at its side. But it has long since been disavowed of its agricultural purpose. Just here the downs are a rolling sea of earth and flint – “in fluctuation fixed”, as WH Hudson saw it – and the contraption sits atop the ridge like a ship run aground. It’s a wind harp, too; the spring breeze setting up a wicked music through the steel shutters and the maritime clang of a loose arm of iron knocking against its neighbour.I circle the machine and run my hands along its smooth, weathered timber flanks. As I turn a corner, a hare bolts from the cover of the walls. At full pace it traces with exactness the arc of a furrow and disappears over the crest of the hill. Looking into where the hare had been settled, I see the collected debris of rodent skulls and small bones.

New research has shown the aged care provider Warrigal that sustainable design affects residents’ wellbeing, as well as its bottom lineIt’s something none of us like to think about. Aged care is a service many people benefit from, although most of us shudder at the thought of leaving the comfort of home during the last stages of our lives.Yet given our ageing population, it’s a sector that is in increased demand – and struggling to keep up. According to the recently released 2016 Residential Aged Care Sustainability Review from the global tax advisory firm RSM, projections show the need for aged care in the next 40 years will rise by 68%. And it suggests that $32.9bn needs to be invested in capital stock over the next decade. Continue reading...

There’s probably a German word for enjoying an autumn swim thanks to global warming, but since I am Catholic the only word I can think of is ‘guilt’Yippee! I’ve said every day I’ve woken up this week, looked out the window and seen that today is yet another beach day when we should be rugging up.“How great is this? The backpackers have gone home, the sun is shining, the water is still warm, and it’s May!” I say to a fellow swimmer on Bondi beach. Continue reading...

The $5bn deal with the government could weaken the huge class action faced by the mining giant and its local partner ValeA Brazilian judge has ratified the settlement BHP Billiton and Vale signed with the Brazilian government in March to cover damages for a deadly dam spill last year.

Hot weekend means people with lung or heart problems should avoid outdoor strenuous activity, warns DefraAir pollution warnings have been issued with temperatures forecast to climb towards 27C (80F) in south-east England and the Midlands this weekend.Some parts of Britain will be hotter than areas of the Mediterranean, but the warm weather will be accompanied by moderate levels of air pollution, which can cause breathing difficulties in vulnerable people. Areas of south-west England and western Scotland could be at higher risk by Sunday. The highest levels are expected in Northern Ireland. Continue reading...

The party leader goes into the election with ambitious plans, having shown his willingness to negotiate with the CoalitionHere’s a quote from Margaret Thatcher warning about climate change. In the 1980s.

Patrick Barkham on how the late flowering of food species can spell disaster for butterflies emerging after winterFor me, spring truly begins when the first male orange tip passes on its ceaseless jinking search for females. It was late this year, and this small white butterfly with unmistakable orange tips to its wings only materialised in my garden last week.What worried me was not its tardiness but its food plant’s. The garlic mustard on which superbly-camouflaged (and occasionally cannibalistic) orange tip caterpillars feed (they also devour that lovely spring flower, lady’s smock, in damper spots) had barely sprouted any leaves last week. Continue reading...

President railed against ‘corrosive attitude’ of hands-off government – but those unable or unwilling to drink their own water need pragmatism, not politicsFour months after he declared a state of emergency in Flint over its toxic water crisis, Barack Obama’s first visit to the Michigan city was as much about repudiating the philosophy of shrunken, hands-off government as it was about the lead-laced liquid that residents still have to drink and bathe in.The president’s address to a restive crowd he called “feisty” included an obligatory sip of Flint water. “This isn’t a stunt,” Obama insisted, while stressing that people could drink the water, if it is properly filtered. Continue reading...

The new mayor of London (Opinion, theguardian.com, 4 May) will need the massed support of the 47% of their constituents who rent their homes if they are to implement an affordable living rent at one third of income. That desperately needed London policy will sail into a perfect gale of national policy crosswinds.The Department for Communities and Local Government tells us, in windy language worthy of Yes Minister, “the maximum rent for an affordable rent property, when it is first let to a new tenant, is 80% of the market rate, inclusive of service charges, or the ‘social rent rate’ (exclusive of service charges), whichever is higher. Providers should then apply the 1% reduction, introduced by the Welfare Reform Act 2016, in the following relevant years”. Continue reading...

Experts have offered stark warnings that proposed power plants in India, China, Vietnam and Indonesia would blow Paris climate deal if they move aheadPlans to build more coal-fired power plants in Asia would be a “disaster for the planet” and overwhelm the deal forged at Paris to fight climate change, the president of the World Bank said on Thursday.In an unusually stark warning, the World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, noted that countries in south and south-east Asia were on track to build hundreds more coal-fired power plants in the next 20 years – despite promises made at Paris to cut greenhouse gas emissions and pivot to a clean energy future. Continue reading...

As David Attenborough turns 90, we’d like you to share how the wildlife television presenter has influenced your life.To celebrate Sir David Attenborough’s 90th birthday on 8 May, we’d like you to share your tributes to the wildlife broadcaster and naturalist whose career in broadcasting has spanned more than half a century.A twist of fate led Sir David to his first presenting role on the BBC series Zoo Quest in 1954. Since then he has fronted a vast number of wildlife documentaries, collected honorary degrees – 32, which is the most of any other person, and has inspired a huge number of wildlife documentary-makers and enthusiasts. Continue reading...

As the UK is hit with another wave of air pollution we look at the causes and effects, what you should do and what action is being takenStagnant air from continental Europe, which has picked up pollution from industry and agriculture, is being blown over the UK from the south-east. This air combines with pollutants already present in the air from UK sources, such as nitrogen oxides and particulates from diesel vehicle engines, to produce air pollution. Continue reading...

Business models employed by multinationals such as Shell and BP are no longer fit for purpose, warns energy expertInternational oil companies such as Shell and BP must completely change their business model or face a “nasty, brutish and short” end within 10 years, one of Britain’s most influential energy experts has warned.Paul Stephens, a fellow at Chatham House thinktank, said in a research paper the oil “majors” were no longer fit for purpose – hit by low crude prices, tightening climate change regulations and their own wrongheaded strategies. Continue reading...

Recent deals in the global agrochemical and seed industry, driven by financial motivations, are a threat to farmers, prices and the environment