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• UK government may extend domestic energy grants to heat batteries

  10-04-2025 16:41 via theguardian.com
  
  Scheme in England and Wales covers only heat pumps, uptake of which has been slowUK politics live – latest updatesThe UK government is considering expanding the boiler upgrade grant scheme for England and Wales to cover sources of low-carbon heating for domestic homes other than heat pumps, the Guardian understands.The government has a target of 600,000 heat pump installations annually by 2028. But data from the Resolution Foundation on Wednesday revealed worryingly low uptake of heat pump
  
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• Week in wildlife: hitchhiking cygnets, a criminal duck and hopping hares

  16-05-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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• Low emission zones are successful in cutting air pollution, study finds

  16-05-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Team in Belgium find improvement in air quality after launch of traffic measures in Brussels, Antwerp and GhentLow emission zones are successful at reducing air pollution and its effects on health, researchers have found.The team, working for the Belgian mutual health insurer Mutualités Libres, were looking at the best ways to cut air pollution and its impact on health. Continue reading...
  
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• Country diary: Skylarks and swallows bring life to the chambered tomb | Derek Niemann

  16-05-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  West Kennet, Wiltshire: We’re surrounded by miracles here – the otherwordly skills of birds in flight, and the heavyweight construction of our ancestorsUnseen hands have tied coloured ribbons to an oak tree at the foot of a whale-backed hill. Whoever crossed the chalk stream to fasten these pretty streamers in red, blue, gold and white found meaning in this place or with the people who came here before – those unknowables who lugged boulders many times their own weight to the t
  
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• ‘We sometimes milked 3,000 snails a day!’: the dying art of milking molluscs

  16-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  For 1,500 years, Mexico’s Mixtec people have extracted ink from the rare purpura snail to dye yarn. But they fear the species – and their rich tradition – may soon be lost for everPhotographs by Mauricio PalosThe site for the camp is well chosen. Mangrove trees provide shade from the sun; from their hammocks, the two men can look out over the yellow sand of Chachacual Bay. Rocks rise at both ends of the beach, breakers crashing against them. Next to the camp, turtles have left
  
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• Poor building standards add £1,000 to energy bills of new homes, analysis finds

  16-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  About £5bn more spent than if rules for low-carbon new-builds had not been scrapped in 2016, ECIU thinktank findsPeople living in newly built homes are being hit with energy bills that are nearly £1,000 a year higher than need be because of the poor standards to which they have been constructed.Occupants of homes built in the past seven years have paid about £5bn more in energy bills than they would have if regulations requiring new homes to be low-carbon had not been scrapped
  
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• Experience: I fought off a polar bear with a saucepan

  16-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  I pulled back the tent flap and there it was, an arm’s length away. So I reached for the closest weapon to hand – my mother’s old porridge-encrusted potI’ve had 35 close encounters with polar bears during my time as an explorer and campaigner for the Arctic Ocean. There’s always that surge of adrenaline when you see one – that sense of: “Oh God, it’s happening.”I’ve learned how to deal with bears over the years. Although I tak
  
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• Delay farmer inheritance tax changes ‘to allow for better formulation’, say MPs

  16-05-2025 01:01 via theguardian.com
  Report says proposals ‘threaten to affect most vulnerable’, who would be helped by more time to seek adviceA group of influential MPs has urged the government to delay controversial planned changes to inheritance tax for farmers to “allow for better formulation of tax policy” and to protect vulnerable farmers by giving them more time to seek advice.The environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee has called on the government to hold off announcing its overhaul of
  
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• The Guardian view on green homes: solar panels and heat pumps should be a bare minimum | Editorial

  15-05-2025 19:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Ministers must resist pressure to relax environmental standards in the rush for new housingAlmost two decades after the last Labour government announced a zero carbon homes standard, and with the breaking of temperature records around the world now so normal as to seem routine, it ought to be uncontroversial that new buildings should be as environmentally friendly as possible. Given everything we know about global heating, and the law obliging the UK to reach net zero by 2050, it is disturbing t
  
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• ‘No one wants a building that kills birds’: why cities are turning off the lights

  15-05-2025 18:37 via theguardian.com
  As avian numbers plunge, activists demand action to save birds from crashing into high-rise blocksThe wren’s legs were tucked delicately underneath its diminutive body, slumped on its side as if asleep. If it wasn’t lying on the bare concrete of a Texas street, there would be few clues that it had endured a crunching, violent death.The bird had flown headfirst into the Bank of America building, a 72-storey modernist skyscraper in the heart of Dallas. Its corpse was catalogued by volu
  
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• How 'forever chemicals' have seeped into almost everything – video

  15-05-2025 15:21 via theguardian.com
  
  Pfas are a group of thousands of chemicals that are used for their non-stick and water-resistant properties. They are often refered to as 'forever chemicals' because they can take thousands of years to break down. Pfas are being found in so many everyday items that it's starting to feel like they are everywhere - non-stick frying pans, waterproof mascaras, stain-resistant clothing, packaging for takeaway food items. Pfas are even in our food, our drinking water and in the rain. Josh Toussaint-St
  
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• The US buried millions of gallons of wartime nuclear waste – Doge cuts could wreck the cleanup

  15-05-2025 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Hanford made the plutonium for US atomic bombs, and its radioactive waste must be dealt with. Enter Elon MuskIn the bustling rural city of Richland, in south-eastern Washington, the signs of a nuclear past are all around.A small museum explains its role in the Manhattan Project and its “singular mission – [to] develop the world’s first atomic bomb before the enemy might do the same”. The city’s high school sports team is still known as the Bombers, with a logo that
  
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• A seadragon and flushing worms: Environmental Photography award winners – in pictures

  15-05-2025 13:34 via theguardian.com
  
  Winning images from the 2025 Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Environmental Photography award, selected from 10,000 images submitted globally. The contest aims to reward photographers who put their creativity to good use in raising awareness of the importance of environmental protectionShortlisted exhibited in Monaco from 3 June-31 July 2025 then touring in various locations around the world Continue reading...
  
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• Record number of river-blocking barriers removed in Europe, report says

  15-05-2025 11:41 via theguardian.com
  Hundreds of dams, weirs, culverts and sluices dismantled in 2024 to help waterways resume natural courseEurope dismantled 542 river-blocking dams, weirs, culverts and sluices in 2024, a report has found, helping a record number of waterways resume their natural course.The number of removals grew 11% from the year before, according to an annual report from Dam Removal Europe. Continue reading...
  
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• South Korea’s female freedivers: TV has made stars of the haenyeo but what is their real story?

  15-05-2025 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The craze for Korean culture has brought fame to the ‘women of the sea’, but not always to their benefit. Now they want to reclaim their stories to inspire a new generationThere is an episode in the Netflix drama When Life Gives You Tangerines where a woman dives into the sea and brings back a catch of abalone (sea snails), which she says will feed her family. The woman is a haenyeo. Haenyeo, or “women of the sea”, have been recorded as far back as the 17th century and ar
  
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• Weatherwatch: How ecologists are helping birds adapt to climate crisis

  15-05-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Moving migratory pied flycatchers further north to breed where food remained resulted in twice as many chicksHow do you help a migratory bird adapt to the climate crisis? One radical solution, as a team of Dutch ecologists discovered, is to move them further north.Pied flycatchers are handsome black-and-white songbirds, which breed in deciduous woodlands across much of temperate Europe. Each autumn, they head south across the Sahara desert to overwinter in west Africa. Continue reading...
  
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• Labour has denounced me as ‘deeply misleading’ on its planning reform. I wish that were true | George Monbiot

  15-05-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Even it now admits that brick by brick, these proposals will wreck habitats. This could be Starmer’s most damaging mistake yetThe precedent is uncanny, and the failure to learn from it downright mystifying. Keir Starmer is rushing gladly towards the catastrophe Boris Johnson inflicted on himself in 2020. Had he set out to stymie Labour’s chances of re-election, he couldn’t be doing it better.In 2020, Johnson promised “a whole new planning system” for England, which,
  
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• Country diary: A wildfire has killed off (nearly) everything wild | Eben Muse

  15-05-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Cilgwyn, Gwynedd: It stripped the hill of its heather, bilberry and bog mosses – and with them the inhabitants of so many nests and burrowsA thick blue haze hangs over the valley – Cilgwyn has burned again. Dead fingers of blackened heather snap underfoot, and each step kicks up a cloud of ash. “Deliberate ignition” was the given cause of the last major fire here, in 2021. Before that, in 2018, another threatened to engulf the village, a kilometre west of Eryri (Snow
  
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• ‘We are witnessing ecocide’: Santander accused of funding vast deforestation

  15-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  In 2024, Spanish bank provided more than $600m in financing to firms linked to beef, palm oil, soya and supply chains driving deforestation, says Global WitnessSergio Rojas recalls how, as a child, he would see bulldozers rolling into Argentina’s Gran Chaco region, razing the forests to the ground and setting the felled trees alight. Animals would scatter and flee, with armadillos, deer, snakes and lizards darting across the ground in search of a new home.The forests of the Gran Chaco were
  
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• Toxic wildfire pollution infiltrates homes of 1bn people a year, study finds

  14-05-2025 20:00 via theguardian.com
  Dangerous indoor pollution could be tackled with air purifiers but costs are too high for many, researchers sayToxic pollution from wildfires has infiltrated the homes of more than a billion people a year over the last two decades, according to new research.The climate crisis is driving up the risk of wildfires by increasing heatwaves and droughts, making the issue of wildfire smoke a “pressing global issue”, scientists said. Continue reading...
  
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• Attempt to protect rare chalk streams in planning bill rejected by Labour MPs

  14-05-2025 17:55 via theguardian.com
  Government vetoes cross-party effort to protect threatened waterways from push to rip up environmental red tapeA cross-party attempt to protect England’s rare and threatened chalk streams in the government’s planning bill was rejected by Labour on Wednesday.The attempt to give the globally rare ecosystems the strongest protections as irreplaceable habitats failed after all the Labour MPs on the parliamentary committee examining the draft law rejected an amendment containing the extra
  
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• Exceptionally low river flows forecast across UK as drought threat grows

  14-05-2025 17:32 via theguardian.com
  Predicted dry, warm weather likely to increase pressure on rivers, whose flows are already far below normalExceptionally low river flows are predicted across the UK this summer as a drought becomes more likely, scientists have said.An update from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) says dry, warm weather is expected over the next three months, putting pressure on water resources. Continue reading...
  
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• How memories of clean water, frogs and fresh air could help save Rio’s favelas from future climate disaster

  14-05-2025 14:04 via theguardian.com
  
  A new exhibition in the Brazilian city looks at how water, the environment and extreme weather is interwoven with personal stories from 10 marginalised communitiesLeticia Pinheiro grew up hearing stories about the Acari River. Her grandmother bathed in its clean waters; her father caught frogs on its margins; and many in the community made a living from fishing there.Now, Pinheiro, 28, and her peers do not even call it a river; it’s become known as a valão – an open canal for
  
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• Country diary: A blossom-laden spring to make up for last year | Virginia Spiers

  14-05-2025 13:52 via theguardian.com
  St Dominic, Tamar Valley: First the pear and now the apple and cherry trees are in full show. We should be in for a bumper harvestAfter five days away near the sun-dazzled Solent, we returned home to a verdant haven. Fruit blossom has dropped with some apples already set; and the 50-year-old Judas tree is covered with purple flowers, vivid against diaphanous beech and swags of native May tree.Before going upcountry, I walked on my mended hip in James Evans and Mary Martin’s documented and
  
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• Early air pollution exposure affects health in adolescence, study finds

  14-05-2025 11:01 via theguardian.com
  UCL study of 9,000 children also found marked inequality, with people from ethnic minority backgrounds having higher exposure riskYoung children who are exposed to high levels of air pollution are more likely to experience poor health outcomes in later adolescence, according to new research.The study, conducted by academics at University College London, looked at data from 9,000 young people taking part in the Millennium Cohort Study born between 2000 and 2002 across the UK, measuring their expo
  
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• ‘Time slows down in Lastovo’: I may just have found Croatia’s most unspoilt archipelago

  14-05-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Five hours by ferry from Split – and a world away from the clubs of Hvar – the islands’ wooded hills, pine-shaded beaches and transparent waters are buzzing with natureThe sound of a baby crying echoes eerily in the night sky, seemingly coming from the uninhabited Zaklopatica islet that faces the terrace of our holiday rental in Lastovo. “Do you think that’s a bird?” I ask my husband. “At this time of night? Doubt it,” he says.Fast forward a couple
  
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• European firms ramping up lobbying for climate action, report finds

  14-05-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Research shows companies ‘aligned’ with strategies to meet climate goals have risen from 3% in 2019 to 23% in 2025European companies are increasingly lobbying for strong climate action, research has found, in a “profound shift” that analysts say challenges the narrative that businesses see green rules as a threat to profits.The share of companies whose corporate lobbying is “aligned” with pathways to meet global climate goals rose from 3% in 2019 to 23% in 202
  
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• Birdwatch: After six decades, I finally catch up with the Alpine accentor

  14-05-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  I visited Bhutan to see some of world’s most striking birds, but one I’d sought since childhood was my highlightI was about seven years old when, in the pages of the European field guide illustrated by the legendary bird artist Roger Tory Peterson, I first came across the Alpine accentor.Something about this bulky cousin of our familiar dunnock must have clicked, because soon afterwards I was convinced I had seen one in our suburban front garden. Not just unlikely but, as I later dis
  
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• Chimpanzees use leaves to wipe bums and clean up after sex, study finds

  14-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Research looking at hygiene and healthcare habits of the primates finds implications for understanding origin of human healthcareHumans are not unique in having a host of hygiene and healthcare habits, researchers have found: chimpanzees also wipe their bottoms, tend each other’s wounds and even clean up after sex, according to a new study.The research from the University of Oxford is not the first to show that great apes take care of themselves. Scientists have previously found chimpanzee
  
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• Dairy companies ‘turning blind eye’ to global methane emissions, report suggests

  14-05-2025 00:01 via theguardian.com
  Assessment of leading dairy and coffee shop chains reveals failure to set out methane reduction targetsBig dairy companies are “turning a blind eye” to climate-damaging methane emissions, an assessment of the industry’s performance has found.Animal agriculture accounts for 32% of global emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, with the breeding of cattle for milk and meat a key driver. Continue reading...
  
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