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Head of Syngenta, world’s biggest pesticide maker, says rejecting farming tech could have serious consequences within 20 years

The world is likely to face food shortages within 20 years if pesticides and genetically modified crops are shunned, according to the head of the world’s biggest pesticide manufacturer.

J Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Syngenta, also said the technologies to produce more food from less land are vital in halting climate change, but that better targeting will mean farmers around the world will use less pesticide in future.

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There is a crisis in the countryside – and a massive decline in insect numbers could have significant consequences for the environment

When Simon Leather was a student in the 1970s, he took a summer job as a postman and delivered mail to the villages of Kirk Hammerton and Green Hammerton in North Yorkshire. He recalls his early morning walks through its lanes, past the porches of houses on his round. At virtually every home, he saw the same picture: windows plastered with tiger moths that had been attracted by lights the previous night and were still clinging to the glass. “It was quite a sight,” says Leather, who is now a professor of entomology at Harper Adams University in Shropshire.

But it is not a vision that he has experienced in recent years. Those tiger moths have almost disappeared. “You hardly see any, although there used to be thousands in summer and that was just a couple of villages.”

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A ‘dream team’ of international scientists scaled Mozambique’s Mount Lico and found a wealth of new species.

Allianceearth.org

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MIT's Kevin Esvelt wants radical transparency for a radical new science. Why?

Team of researchers changes microbes in koalas’ guts in order to improve type of food they consume

Scientists believe they have found a new weapon in the battle to save endangered species: faecal transplants. They say that by transferring faeces from the gut of one animal to another they could boost the health and viability of endangered creatures. In particular, they believe the prospects of saving the koala could be boosted this way.

The idea of using faecal transplants as conservation weapons was highlighted this month at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in Atlanta, where scientists outlined experiments in which they used the technique to change microbes in the guts of koalas.

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WCI’s market operators have blocked participants in California and Quebec from trading allowances with Ontario entities following the new provincial leader Doug Ford’s decision to abruptly scrap Ontario’s cap-and-trade scheme and leave the North American programme.

It is horsefly season, which means all those enjoying the countryside should watch out for bites.

A new report argues we’d all benefit if the government started taking the cycle industry seriously

If a country wants to make things, it needs a domestic steel industry. Our government considers this industry to be one of national strategic importance. But you would think it was also important to keep people moving, to make sure the air they breathe is clean and to look after their health.

It just so happens that cycling is one of the ways to unsnarl traffic congestion, reduce pollution and make folks hale and hearty. People who cycle to work even have fewer days off sick.

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Stamford, Lincolnshire: A dead starling chick appears on the ground outside, almost fledged. I’m upset to see it

Scratchings rattle above an upstairs lintel in early April and I think little of it. That nest that’s been occupied for four consecutive years is being renovated, that’s all. The shadows of birds firing from gable to gable over the street, air alive with busy chatter. “But the nest has gone,” my wife says. “Those builders, last year.”

I stand over the street and watch with binoculars. A sharp-edged bird swoops in, then disappears beneath my roofline through what I see now is a hole. Starlings. Brash, boisterous, bully-birds – and colonising our loft.

I keep watch. I see them coming and going. Sometimes they watch me watching them, from an aerial perch, silhouetted against the sky with a wariness I can feel.

The starling is a striking bird. With a sharp yellow bullet for a beak and plumage of dark iridescence, they are exotic-looking, and shimmer in petrol-peacock blues and greens and purples when caught in light. Yet we see them as hooligans. Even the Latin name of the European starling, Sturnus vulgaris, suggests so. Starlings absorb the sounds of their surroundings into their song – car alarms, speech, infant cries. And now, moving in. The human-bird.

I hear them dig in their roost, then nothing for a while, then suddenly the thin mewling of chicks, at the same time loud and delicate in a way that makes you fearfully parental. The days pass and the cries strengthen; I hear scuttlings, then nothing. A dead chick appears on the ground outside, almost fledged, already oiled with that mercury look. I’m upset to see it.

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Is there any scientific merit to the idea of ‘seasteading’ - floating micro-nations on the sea?

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

The Massachusetts Senate unanimously approved an omnibus clean energy bill on Thursday night that provides for the creation of a market-based mechanism for economy-wide pricing carbon and several other renewable energy goals.

We go messing about on a river boat; tackle the thorny issue of picking finger limes; brussels sprouts get a new lease on life; and a Matilda collection waltzes back to Winton.

EU carbon prices plunged heavily on Friday to their lowest levels since May 16 as traders sold in anticipation of a pause in the year’s stellar gains ahead of a key option expiry date and as auction volumes approach a record.

Germany is to extend beyond this year a three-year project to support poorer nations on carbon markets, while also opening a tender seeking experts to study EU ETS market liquidity, documents showed.

Government faces criticism from its own advisors over failure to mention emissions targets as campaigners enter second week of hunger strike

The government is coming under growing pressure from environmentalists and its own advisers over its support for a new runway at Heathrow.

The Committee on Climate Change [CCC] has expressed its “surprise” that there was no mention of the government’s legal obligations to reduce greenhouse gases when it announced it was backing Heathrow expansion plans earlier this month.

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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

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The secretive mammals are fast disappearing from the Highlands but last-ditch efforts to save them are fraught with challenges

Set deep in mixed woodland of Scots pine and birch, near the banks of the river Beauly in Inverness-shire, several huge, concealed pens contain two breeding pairs of Scottish wildcat.

Wildcats mate from January to March, and their high, anguished breeding calls through the dark winter nights are thought to have inspired tales of the Cat Sith, a spectral feline of Celtic legend that was believed to haunt the Highlands.

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Ontario will not participate in the next quarterly WCI auction in August, sources told Carbon Pulse, as its new premier announced that his government's first act will be to scrap the provincial cap-and-trade scheme.

Below is a table of the closing prices, ranges and volumes for China's regional pilot carbon markets this week. All prices are in RMB, and volumes in tonnes of CO2e. Data sourced from local exchanges.