Environment news

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• Climate crisis has tripled length of deadly ocean heatwaves, study finds

  14-04-2025 21:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Hotter seas supercharge storms and destroy critical ecosystems such as kelp forests and coral reefsThe climate crisis has tripled the length of ocean heatwaves, a study has found, supercharging deadly storms and destroying critical ecosystems such as kelp forests and coral reefs.Half of the marine heatwaves since 2000 would not have happened without global heating, which is caused by burning fossil fuels. The heatwaves have not only become more frequent but also more intense: 1C warmer on averag
  
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• ‘People can’t imagine something on that scale dying’: Anohni on mourning the Great Barrier Reef

  26-04-2025 02:00 via theguardian.com
  The Anohni and the Johnsons singer is collaborating with marine scientists for two special shows at Sydney’s Vivid festival that will show the reef’s plight Anohni Hegarty is about to go to the Great Barrier Reef for the first time. “I feel like I’m going to Auschwitz,” she says nervously. “On the one hand, I’m so excited to go because the landscape is so beautiful, and I know there’s going to be so much that’s gorgeous. And yet, I’m al
  
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• Britain will find ‘common ground’ with US on energy policy, says Miliband

  25-04-2025 17:52 via theguardian.com
  
  Energy secretary says countries must work together during conference at which US delegate called net zero ‘dangerous’Britain will find “common ground” with the US on energy and the economy including on nuclear power, despite differences over climate policy, the UK energy secretary, Ed Miliband, has pledged.He was speaking at the close of a two-day, 60-country conference in London on energy security, hosted by the government and the International Energy Agency (IEA), at wh
  
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• Will Cop30 in Belém help or harm the Amazon?

  25-04-2025 17:03 via theguardian.com
  Trees are being cleared for rainforest mega-event – but state governor says a ‘new history’ is under wayFake metal trees have been set into the concrete ground of the Amazonian host city of this year’s climate summit, prompting scandalised contrasts with the once-living vegetation that has been cleared in preparation for Cop30 in Brazil.But in an unlikely convergence of views, both the centre-right state governor and leftwing social movements insist this is a storm in a p
  
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• Is it still worth getting a home battery in Australia if I can’t install solar panels on my roof?

  25-04-2025 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Some households aren’t suited to solar – but do batteries make environmental or financial sense on their own?Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprintGot a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.comMany people want to reduce their carbon footprint but for various reasons can’t install solar panels. Some roofs face the wrong way, others ar
  
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• ‘A sweeping catastrophe’: 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, a photo exhibit honors Mississippi victims

  25-04-2025 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Hurricane Katrina: Mississippi Remembers captures the grief and resilience of survivors in the Magnolia stateTwenty years ago this August, the United States Gulf coast was irrevocably changed when Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and costliest storms to ever hit the country, made landfall. Making landfall as a strong category 3, the storm, which was so vast it stretched the length of the Mississippi Gulf coast all the way into Alabama, hit the Mississippi-Louisiana coastal border before c
  
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• Brazil will host this year’s Cop30 climate talks. Can it get ready in time?

  25-04-2025 14:24 via theguardian.com
  
  Belém prepares for an international conference on a far greater scale than anything previously seen in the AmazonFake metal trees have been set into the concrete ground of the Amazonian host city of this year’s climate summit, prompting scandalised contrasts with the once-living vegetation that has been cleared in preparation for Cop30 in Brazil.But in an unlikely convergence of views, both the centre-right state governor and leftwing social movements insist this is a storm in a pla
  
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• Weather tracker: thunderstorms lash Italy in aftermath of Storm Hans

  25-04-2025 12:17 via theguardian.com
  
  Authorities warn of mudslides during intense rainfall, as Kenya is hit by deadly flash floodingEurope live – latest updatesAfter Storm Hans battered northern Italy in the runup to Easter, severe weather continued to lash much of the country this week. Since Tuesday, the conditions have triggered potent showers and thunderstormsand yellow and orange weather warnings have been issued.With winds generally remaining light this week, the greatest concerns surround the risks from intense rainfal
  
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• Week in wildlife: wild ponies, a playful jaguar and penguin chicks taking their first swim

  25-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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• Drax needs a better policeman

  25-04-2025 06:01 via theguardian.com
  Public confidence in the UK biomass industry is low – robust checks are needed to ensure every wood pellet its power plant burns is sustainableEven government ministers sounded embarrassed in February when they threw yet more subsidies at Drax, recipient of £6.5bn to date, to keep its wood-burning power plant open until 2031. Few people think the biomass industry can survive in the long term unless as-yet-untested carbon capture technology can be installed.But the bizarre business of
  
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• ‘It shapes the whole experience’: what happens when you build a city from wood?

  25-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Transforming a former industrial area in Sweden will bring psychological benefits for future residents and reduce construction’s climate impactAlthough activity is high, it is surprisingly quiet inside the construction site of a high school extension in Sickla, a former industrial area in south Stockholm that is set to become part of the “largest mass timber project in the world” according to the Swedish urban property developer Atrium Ljungberg.Just a few months remain until s
  
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• UK going ‘all out’ to to be a clean energy superpower, says Keir Starmer – video

  24-04-2025 23:56 via theguardian.com
  UK prime minister tells energy summit his government is determined to transition energy system from fossil fuels to renewablesBritain will accelerate push to net zero, Starmer tells energy summit Continue reading...
  
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• Only three people ever prosecuted for covering up England’s illegal sewage spills

  24-04-2025 23:30 via theguardian.com
  Employees of water firms who obstruct investigations into spills could face jail under new rules that come into force on FridayWater company bosses have entirely escaped punishment for covering up illegal sewage spills, government figures show, as ministers prepare to bring in a new law threatening them with up to two years in prison for doing so.Only three people have ever been prosecuted for obstructing the Environment Agency in its investigations into sewage spills, officials said, and none r
  
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• Norfolk bird surveyors find Britain’s oldest known oystercatchers

  24-04-2025 14:04 via theguardian.com
  
  Birds in their 40s wintering on mudflats of the Wash received leg rings in early 1980sIf your ears are assaulted by the shrill piping calls of an excitable bird on the east coast of England, fear not: it’s probably an oystercatcher experiencing a midlife crisis.Two of the handsome black and white birds with bright red-orange bills have been found to be the oldest known oystercatchers ever recorded in Britain, clocking up at least 41 and 43 years on the mudflats of the Wash. Continue readin
  
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• Wood-burning stoves to be allowed in new homes in England despite concerns

  24-04-2025 13:11 via theguardian.com
  
  Campaigners condemn decision amid growing evidence of harm to health and climate from heating appliancesUK politics live – latest updatesWood-burning stoves will be allowed to heat new-build homes in England despite growing evidence showing their significant contribution to air pollution and carbon emissions.The government is writing its future homes standard, a set of rules for developers, aimed at decarbonising England’s housing stock. Heating the UK’s 28m homes accounts for
  
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• Miliband urges global cooperation amid energy 'challenges'

  24-04-2025 12:50 via bbc.com
  
  The UK Energy Secretary was speaking at the opening of a two day summit on energy security.
  
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• Giant icebergs once drifted off the coast of Britain, scientists find

  24-04-2025 11:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Discovery could provide valuable clues as to how the climate crisis might affect Antarctica, says studyGiant, flat-topped icebergs the size of the city of Cambridge drifted off the coast of Britain during the last ice age, according to a study that has uncovered evidence of their existence for the first time.A series of distinctive, comb-like grooves found preserved in sediment near Aberdeen in Scotland were left behind by the underside of huge “tabular” icebergs that dragged across
  
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• Fingerprints of city-sized icebergs found off UK coast

  24-04-2025 11:00 via bbc.com
  
  Deep tracks gouged in the seafloor off the coast of Scotland could help us understand Antarctica today.
  
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• Meet the new American refugees fleeing across state lines for safety

  24-04-2025 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Americans have often moved between states for opportunities. Now they’re being forced to uproot themselves to escape hostile forces under Trump Continue reading...
  
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• He fought to stop the forest being felled. The price was 30 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit

  24-04-2025 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The UN has called the detention of Pablo López Alavez ‘arbitrary’, while human rights organisations say his sentence is part of a systematic and alarming pattern of criminalisation of Mexico’s environmental activistsThe meeting room in the prison of Villa de Etla, a town in Oaxaca, Mexico, doubles as a classroom with school desks and a small library. The walls feature motivational phrases such as “First things first”, “Live and let live” and &ldqu
  
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• Labour’s great nature sellout is the worst attack on England’s ecosystems I’ve seen in my lifetime | George Monbiot

  24-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The horrifying planning bill, which rips up environmental protections, was drafted with CEOs in mind. We know because Keir Starmer told usThose of us who try to defend wildlife are horribly familiar with bad laws. But we’ve never seen anything like this. The government’s planning and infrastructure bill is the worst assault on England’s ecosystems in living memory. It erases decades of environmental protections, including legislation we inherited from the EU, which even the Tor
  
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• EVs to cost more under a Coalition government, after Dutton’s apparent backflip on popular tax break

  24-04-2025 07:26 via theguardian.com
  
  Polestar says Dutton’s move shows ‘a complete lack of understanding of the significant cost-of-living, climate and health benefits of EVs’Election 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaignPolls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverageAnywhere but Canberra; interactive electorates guideListen to the latest episode of our new narrative podcast series: GinaGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastElectric vehicles would cost more
  
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• Country diary: Thousands of honey drops on a single branch | Paul Evans

  24-04-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  The Marches, Shropshire: In this garden we’ve had woolly aphids, rose aphids, whitefly and blackfly, now we have Californian maple aphids, who have a story of their ownAn accidental touch of a branch brings a handful of little sticky dots. Looking at the branch, the surprise is that all the lower ones are covered with a shifting pointillism of dots moving together. Under a hand lens they become autonomous animals – aphids.There are thousands of them, moving independently as individua
  
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• Two teens and 5,000 ants: how a smuggling bust shed new light on a booming trade

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Two Belgian 19-year-olds have pleaded guilty to wildlife piracy – part of a growing trend of trafficking ‘less conspicuous’ creatures for sale as exotic petsPoaching busts are familiar territory for the officers of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), an armed force tasked with protecting the country’s iconic creatures. But what awaited guards when they descended in early April on a guesthouse in the west of the country was both larger and smaller in scale than the smuggling ope
  
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• Water firms admit sewage monitoring damaging public trust

  24-04-2025 03:09 via bbc.com
  The industry says powers to self-monitor water quality should be handed back to the regulator.
  
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• Bites on gladiator bones prove combat with lion

  23-04-2025 20:01 via bbc.com
  Experts say the discovery provides the first physical evidence of gladiatorial combat with animals.
  
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• Xi contrasts China’s clean energy promises with Trump turmoil

  23-04-2025 18:51 via theguardian.com
  
  Virtual meeting of leaders also hears UN’s António Guterres proclaim ‘no group or government’ can stop green revolutionChina will continue to push forward on the climate crisis, Xi Jinping has said while appearing to criticise the “protectionism” of Donald Trump’s tariff policies.The Chinese president was attending a closed-door virtual meeting with the UN secretary general, António Guterres, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da S
  
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• ‘We don’t call them woolly maggots’: how wildlife campaigners put sheep at heart of rewilding plans

  23-04-2025 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The Wildlife Trusts are in shock after acquiring 4,000 sheep in Rothbury estate deal as part of land restoration projectWoolly maggots, nature-destroyers – sheep are criticised by many conservationists for denuding Britain’s uplands of rare plants and trees.So The Wildlife Trusts were shocked when they were compelled to buy 4,000 sheep as part of the biggest land restoration project in England. Continue reading...
  
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• I loathe pigeons. You wouldn’t believe what they do to my downpipe | Adrian Chiles

  23-04-2025 16:22 via theguardian.com
  
  These noisy, filthy, feral creatures make my life a misery. Is there really no way to get rid of them?Pigeons. Appalling things. I looked them up on the bird charity RSPB’s website and snorted when I came across the Where to See section. The answer is, just so you know, everywhere. Perhaps not so much outside towns and cities but in urban areas you’re never far from the sight and sound of the bloody things. If, unaccountably, you’re not familiar with this species, do feel free
  
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• A dwarf crocodile carried home by a hunter: Thomas Nicolon’s best photograph

  23-04-2025 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  ‘As a species, these crocs are easy to find and easy to catch. Brice Itoua is the most skilled hunter in his village. But they kill the crocs to eat – not to sell’The Congo dwarf crocodile is a lovely species. They’re very shy and, unfortunately, very easy to find and catch. Mostly hunted for their bushmeat, these crocs only grow up to a few feet in length and during the dry season, they often spend the daytime hiding in burrows and dens at the water’s edge. Hunters
  
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