The Guardian

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including an endangered white-headed duck, a Harrison Ford snake and a sick cat

Australia needs policy changes, more vehicle chargers and a bigger focus on regional areas to catch on low-emissions transport, Solar Citizens says

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Electric utes are perfectly suited to driving in regional Australia but the country needs policy changes and more public chargers to encourage the transport trend, according to a renewable energy group.

Solar Citizens has called for changes as it prepared to complete a six-month electric ute road trip on Friday that has taken the technology through towns in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.

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Water of about 26 million is contaminated as new data offers the most robust look into exactly which communities are polluted

Drinking water consumed by millions of Americans from hundreds of communities spread across the United States is contaminated with dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, according to testing data released Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The data shows that drinking water systems serving small towns to large cities – from tiny Collegeville, Pennsylvania, to Fresno, California – contain measurable levels of so-called “forever chemicals”, a family of durable compounds long used in a variety of commercial products but that are now known to be harmful.

But experts say damage can be reversed if US and Canada act quickly to stop new plastics from entering lake system

About 90% of water samples taken over the last 10 years from the Great Lakes contain microplastic levels that are unsafe for wildlife, a new peer-reviewed paper from the University of Toronto finds.

About 20% of those samples are at the highest level of risk, but the study’s authors say the damage can be reversed if the US and Canada quickly act.

Mandatory reporting for large and medium-sized businesses would lower prices and help climate, say campaigners

The government has been criticised for binning food waste legislation that campaigners say could have reduced food prices and helped tackle the climate crisis.

The policy would have made food waste reporting mandatory for large and medium-sized businesses in England. According to research by the environmental campaign group Feedback, if it led to just a 1% reduction in food waste, food businesses would save an estimated total of at least £24.4m a year.

Wildlife experts fear spread could devastate native bees, which the hornets dismember and eat

Asian hornets have been spotted in their greatest numbers yet in the UK, which could have a devastating effect on native bees, which they kill, dismember and eat.

There have been 39 wasps and nests seen in the country since the species was first observed in 2016, and this year there have been 16 sightings, data shows.

Folkestone, Kent: confirmed 11 August.

Folkestone, Kent: confirmed 10 August.

Maidstone, Kent: confirmed 7 August and nest destroyed.

Portland, Dorset: confirmed 7 August and nest destroyed.

Deal, Kent: confirmed 6 August.

Folkestone, Kent: confirmed 4 August and nest destroyed.

Portland, Dorset: confirmed 4 August and nest destroyed.

Whitstable, Kent: confirmed 3 August and nest destroyed.

Deal, Kent: confirmed 2 August.

Plymouth, Devon: confirmed 27 July and two nests destroyed.

Gravesend, Kent: confirmed 24 July and nest destroyed.

Shepherdswell, Kent: confirmed 5 July and nest destroyed.

Deal, Kent: confirmed 28 June and nest destroyed.

Canterbury, Kent: confirmed 31 May and single hornet captured.

Ashford, Kent: confirmed 23 May and single hornet captured.

Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland: confirmed 11 April and single hornet captured.

Africa has lost about 90% of its vultures over the past 50 years. It’s a rapidly growing crisis, and the decline is not down to natural causes. Most of these birds are being poisoned, often unintentionally, by humans. We know the impact that mass vulture death can have on humans, because India suffered the same fate just 20 years ago. Neelam Tailor looks into how humans are accidentally killing millions of vultures, and the deadly impact it has had on people

A wildfire that broke out in a national park on the Spanish island of Tenerife has spread to 300 hectares, prompting authorities to order the evacuation of five villages and sever access to the forest surrounding the Mount Teide volcano

Analysis finds Treasury rules on new windfarms likely to stifle energy generation and keep bills high

New offshore windfarms will be strangled by government red tape, costing UK billpayers £1.5bn a year, an analysis has found.

The latest government auction for new offshore windfarms, due to be completed in September, could result in few projects making it through Treasury rules, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a non-profit organisation.

Exclusive: State oil firm, whose chief will preside over Cop28, also accused of ‘incoherent’ reduction targets

The United Arab Emirates, which will run the crucial Cop28 UN climate summit in December, has failed to report its emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane to the UN for almost a decade, the Guardian can reveal.

Its state oil company, Adnoc, whose chief executive, Sultan Al Jaber, controversially will preside over the climate summit, has also set itself a methane leak target far higher than the level it claims it has already reached. Al Jaber recently urged countries and companies to be “brutally honest” about the inadequacy of global action to fight the climate crisis.

Mass bleaching events go largely unseen, but a quarter of marine species and half a billion humans depend upon reefs

When images of the climate emergency’s impact are so visceral and so widespread, it is easy to neglect what we cannot see. The shocking photographs and video footage of wildfires in Hawaii and Greece, and floods in China, along with the terrible loss of life and testimony from those who fled, are beginning to bring home the contribution of global heating to such disasters – even if people, and especially businesses and governments, may be slow to accept the truth and even slower to act on it.

Yet our eyes cannot fully capture the devastation in Hawaii, and it does not end where its shores meet the sea. Beneath the surface of the water, sediment runoff may smother coral polyps and block sunlight, affecting the growth of colonies, experts warn. This is only one element of a broader disaster now unfolding, which scientists fear may soon be global and yet which has generated relatively little attention or alarm. Corals in countries across Central America, North America and the Caribbean are suffering significant bleaching as they experience unprecedented levels of heat stress due to record ocean temperatures, and there are similar warnings about reefs off northern Vietnam and southern China. In Florida, some sites have reported total loss of all corals.

The Asia native was found in Georgia, prompting concern that it could devastate important pollinators including the honeybee

A yellow-legged hornet has been found in the US for the first time, prompting concerns among experts about the agricultural threat the invasive Asian species poses, not least to honeybees and other pollinators.

The Georgia department of agriculture (GDA) said a beekeeper in Savannah spotted the insect on his property and reported it to authorities. It was subsequently confirmed as a yellow-legged hornet.

Further 41 species on course to be declared critically endangered, complicating Albanese government’s zero extinctions target

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Five species, including Tasmania’s Maugean skate, could jeopardise the Albanese government’s zero extinctions target, according to a scientific committee that provides advice on endangered species.

A further 41 species are on course to be declared critically endangered, sparking alarm from environment groups at the pace at which plants and animals are reaching the most urgent status on the threatened list.

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Failure to heed warnings over unchecked growth meant blaze was ‘a disaster waiting to happen’, say scientists and academics

Scientists and academics say they have been warning for several years that invasive grasses covering a quarter of the Hawaii islands are a major fire risk.

Untamed grassland helped fuel the spread and intensity of last week’s deadly fires on the island of Maui, according to experts. The fires, which broke out last Tuesday, have killed at least 106 people and destroyed the island’s historic town of Lahaina.

Twenty-five countries are using 80% of their water supplies each year, research shows

Twenty-five countries that are home to a quarter of the world’s population are facing extreme water stress, according to research.

Data from the World Resources Institute suggests these countries are regularly using 80% of their water supplies each year.

By the war’s end, it will be too late to prevent the worst consequences of these terrible crimes. Global leaders must act now

• Andriy Yermak is head of the Office of the President of Ukraine; Margot Wallström is a former foreign minister of Sweden

Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist who led the team that developed the world’s first nuclear weapons, quoted from ancient Hindu scriptures to illustrate his conflicting feelings about the forces his science unleashed: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” he said. In his later years, Oppenheimer longed for a future “without nation states armed for war, and above all, a world without war”.

Yet there’s another kind of loss that Oppenheimer recognised only too clearly in his readings of the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient text he turned to after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Humans now possess the power to destroy the world they live in.

The people of Ukraine have grown cruelly familiar with war and death, inflicted on them by a nation state with vastly superior resources: they will never forget the human loss they have suffered in fighting to save their homeland. But Ukraine is also facing a destruction of habitat and nature on a scale that will reverberate far beyond its borders. While it is almost impossible to measure, the breadth and depth of this damage must be understood.

Russia has taken deliberate aim at Ukraine’s environment: its rivers, forests and fields. Many of Ukraine’s natural reserves – its animal and sea life, water and impressive biodiversity – have been terribly damaged or polluted. Toxins leak from its damaged industries and infrastructure. Global food security is at risk. The world cannot afford to ignore this growing environmental threat.

The overwhelming threat to Ukraine’s environment was highlighted in June, with the extraordinary collapse of the huge Nova Kakhovka dam, which held back one of the biggest water reservoirs in Europe. This was no coincidental collapse: the dam was under Russian control when an explosion inside an internal passageway blew its concrete heart to pieces. This unleashed a catastrophic flood that wrecked over 40 towns and villages and one of the world’s most valuable agricultural regions. Tonnes of oil were spilled into the Dnipro River. An uncountable number of landmines were strewn into the river and the Black Sea, leading to toxic leakage.

Half of regular green tweeters abandoned platform after its sale and cuts to moderation, analysis finds

Half of people regularly tweeting about the climate and nature crises abandoned Twitter after it was taken over by Elon Musk, according to new analysis.

The researchers said Twitter, now renamed X, had previously been the leading social media platform for environmental discussion and the decline was “troubling”. They said the “exodus of environmental users on Twitter is an existential threat” to a main way of informing people who want to take climate action.

There are many reasons to be vegetarian but I don’t mind about what happens to an animal after it dies, so long as it lives well

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I used to only eat meat from sheep whose names I knew. This was not a particularly difficult task: they were all called Sam, through a naming convention established by my father. He assured us it had nothing to do with both his daughters dating people named Sam at the time.

Being vegetarian except for lamb grown on my parents’ farm, from sheep I had likely held as babies, has baffled meat eaters and vegetarians alike. When my parents sold the farm, and the last cuts left the freezer, I stopped eating meat altogether. I didn’t miss it. I never cook it myself and, when given the choice, I will always choose not to eat it.

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People have had enough. Our historic class action could be the start of desperately needed change in the water industry

In England and Wales, anger about the state of our rivers and beaches is vast. Open-water swimmers, fishers and canoeists describe navigating through filthy liquid covered in brown scum. Social media posts show disturbing pictures of bankside tree roots and sewer outfalls festooned with the tatty remains of toilet paper and tampons. Blankets of silt and algae mask the previously pristine spawning grounds of salmon. Many people report that their local streams are cloudy, stinking and virtually bereft of fish and aquatic plants, whereas they used to be sparkling waters full of life. Clearly, all is not well in the aquatic environment.

That’s why, for the first time in English law, I have begun legal action with the support of Leigh Day against six of the largest water companies, on behalf of more than 20 million householders. If we win, the compensation could be more than £800m, which would result in about £40 or £50 being paid back per household. Our case is this: we hope to prove that the water companies have been underreporting the number of pollution incidents and overcharging customers as a result. To top it off, rather than reinvesting their substantial revenues, these companies have paid out handsome dividends to shareholders and attractive bonuses to senior staff. During the financial year 2021-22, the main water companies in the UK paid out almost £966m in dividends.

Carolyn Roberts is a water and environment consultant and emeritus professor at Gresham College, London

Family and friends delight in telling me tall tales about rodents and now my unfortunate phobia has been passed on to my children

While I couldn’t spontaneously name them, I feel sure there were good qualities I wanted to pass on to my children. But all I’ve managed to transmit is a violent fear of rodents, and even that, to only one of them. I didn’t realise how successful I’d been until a couple of years ago, when we saw a mouse in my son’s bedroom. I screamed; he screamed. I jumped on the bed; he jumped on a chair – but it was a revolving one, so he started spinning round, screaming, and I screamed more. Mr Z ran in expecting an intruder, though I notice he didn’t bring anything to use as a weapon. As much as I reviled it, I felt a bit sorry for the mouse. It was all so ultra.

Consequent to this very noisy, melodramatic phobia, it pleases my associates to tell me stories about mice and rats, which, generally speaking, aren’t true. My brother-in-law told me that, if they have a rat problem on a building site, they contain all the rats in a zone where the only food source is each other, until finally they have one giant rat, and they shoot it in the head. It stalks my dreams, this mutant rat cannibal, even though it makes no sense. On holiday, my friend told me there was a rat in the kitchen, and while I could recognise this at 50 paces as the title of a popular song, I nevertheless believed that there was also a real rat, in the kitchen.