The Guardian

Ed Miliband seems happy to see the landscape blighted. We value townscape – everywhere else has to fend for itself

Does Labour believe in beauty? The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, celebrated his arrival in office this summer by permitting three of the largest solar panel arrays in Britain. One, a Suffolk array covering nearly 2,800 acres, was described by a county councillor as “the poorest infrastructure application that I have ever dealt with”.

Now Miliband is demanding a procession of pylons filling the glorious Amber Valley in the Derbyshire uplands. Another parade of 420 pylons, each nearly as tall as Nelson’s column, will run down the east of England from Grimsby to Walpole, near King’s Lynn in Norfolk. The government also wants to allow the return of onshore wind turbines, overriding local objections.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

High blood concentrations of ‘forever chemical’ compound PFOS linked to problems falling asleep and waking up

Some of the most common types of PFAS may cause sleep disorders in young adults, new research finds, and the study’s authors for the first time identified how the chemicals probably impact the brain to cause disruptions.

The peer-reviewed University of Southern California (USC) study looked at PFAS levels in the blood of adults between 19 and 24 years old, and found those in the highest one-third slept an average of about 80 fewer minutes nightly than those in the lowest third.

Exclusive: Data on number and nature of wildfires at odds with claims of landowner seeking to ban wild camping

Wild camping is not a significant fire risk on Dartmoor, data shows, despite claims by a wealthy landowner who has been trying to ban the practice.

The supreme court is deciding on a case brought by the hedge fund manager Alexander Darwall, who is seeking to remove the right to camp on Dartmoor without landowner permission.

Hail swath estimated at 120 miles damages crops in western Victoria as winds break windows and rip tiles from roofs

On Wednesday, the Australian state of Victoria was hit by thunderstorms. The town of Casterton was particularly badly affected, receiving 21mm of rain in just 30 minutes, followed by large hailstones.

Vehicles and properties were severely damaged, with reports of broken windows and tiles blown off roofs due to strong winds.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Thinktank says government should set up arm’s-length company to buy Harland & Wolff site, which is in administration

The UK government should set up an arm’s-length company to buy the Harland & Wolff naval shipyard in Belfast as part of a drive to repurpose arms manufacturing towards producing green infrastructure, according to a report.

The study from the thinktank Common Wealth is launching what it describes as a “Lucas Plan for the 21st century” setting out how the UK’s military industrial capacity can be transformed into a supply pipeline for green energy, benefiting workers, communities and the environment.

Survey of young people aged 16-25 from all US states shows concerns across political spectrum

The overwhelming majority of young Americans worry about the climate crisis, and more than half say their concerns about the environment will affect where they decide to live and whether to have children, new research finds.

The study comes just weeks after back-to-back hurricanes, Helene and Milton, pummeled the south-eastern US. Flooding from Helene caused more than 600 miles of destruction, from Florida’s west coast to the mountains of North Carolina, while Milton raked across the Florida peninsula less than two weeks later.

Spider eyes, butterfly wing scales, truffle spores and slime mould come under the spotlight in the 50th anniversary of the Nikon Small World photomicrography competition. The award celebrates photography through the light microscope, capturing the breathtaking beauty of a world hidden from the naked eye

• A year in focus: Walkley award photographic finalists 2024 – in pictures

Some of Sydney's most popular swimming spots including Coogee and Gordons Bay beaches will remain closed after thousands of mysterious balls washed ashore. Preliminary test results identified the dark spheres as 'tar balls' – which are formed when oil comes into contact with debris and water, usually as a result of oil spills or seepage. Addressing reporters on Thursday, Randwick council mayor Dylan Parker said the beaches will stay closed while further investigations are carried out by government agencies. Bondi, Tamarama and Bronte beaches had also closed 'out of precaution', Waverley council said in a statement on Thursday

• Mysterious tar balls washing ashore force closure of seven beaches in Sydney including Bondi

Supermarket will buy almost two-thirds of the energy generated by the new £450m Cleve Hill solar park in Kent

Tesco has struck a deal to buy enough solar power to run 144 of its large supermarkets, buying almost two-thirds of the entire electricity output from the Cleve Hill solar park in Kent.

The £450m solar park is being built on farmland near Faversham by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a London-based firm that invests in renewable and low-carbon energy in the US, UK and Australia.

Forest Alliance of NSW report says current regulations are a ‘licence to kill’ endangered species in four state forests where logging is scheduled

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Forest campaigners are demanding an immediate moratorium on logging in endangered greater glider habitat in New South Wales after their surveys detected more than triple the number of gliders than what was recorded by the state-owned forestry agency.

The Forest Alliance of NSW said current regulations are a “licence to kill” the species, whose populations have already plummeted in the aftermath of the black summer bushfires.

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Landmark review says urgent action needed to conserve resources and save ecosystems that supply fresh water

More than half the world’s food production will be at risk of failure within the next 25 years as a rapidly accelerating water crisis grips the planet, unless urgent action is taken to conserve water resources and end the destruction of the ecosystems on which our fresh water depends, experts have warned in a landmark review.

Half the world’s population already faces water scarcity, and that number is set to rise as the climate crisis worsens, according to a report from the Global Commission on the Economics of Water published on Thursday.

Emergency requests by 27 states to pause rule requiring fossil fuel-powered plants to reduce emissions were denied

The US supreme court declined on Wednesday to put on hold a new federal rule targeting carbon pollution from coal- and gas-fired power plants at the request of numerous states and industry groups in another major challenge to Joe Biden’s efforts to combat the climate crisis.

The justices denied emergency requests by West Virginia, Indiana and 25 other states – most of them Republican-led – as well as power companies and industry associations, to halt the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule while litigation continues in a lower court. The regulation, aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions that drive the climate crisis, took effect on 8 July.

Research suggests the marine animals are inhaling pollutants when they come up for air, with even rural populations affected

Microplastics have been found in dolphin breath for the first time, according to a study that suggests the marine mammals are inhaling the potentially harmful contaminants when they come up for air.

The US research team, whose preliminary findings are published in the journal, Plos One, are concerned about the potential impact of inhaled plastics on the animals’ lungs.

Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd organisation faces extradition to Japan after arrest in Nuuk in July

Paul Watson, the anti-whaling activist detained in Greenland and awaiting possible extradition to Japan, has appealed to Emmanuel Macron for political asylum in France.

Watson was detained in July after a Japanese request to Interpol over his confrontational tactics aimed at disrupting whaling operations in the Antarctic, and could face up to 15 years in prison if he is extradited and convicted.

Exclusive: proposal to Cop16 could see ‘funga’ get global legal consideration distinct from flora and fauna

A new era of mycelial conservation could begin this month when the UK and Chile propose that fungi should be placed alongside animals and plants as a separate realm for environmental protection.

Mushrooms, mould, mildew, yeast and lichen would all receive elevated status under the plan, which will be submitted to the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD) during the Cop16 meeting in Cali, Colombia, which opens on 21 October.

Tech barons are forever predicting some amazing new technology to fix the climate crisis. Yet fixes already exist

There are so many ways to fiddle while Rome burns, or as this season’s weather would have it, gets torn apart by hurricanes and tornadoes and also goes underwater – and, in other places, burns. One particularly pernicious way comes from the men in love with big tech, who are forever insisting that we need some amazing new technology to solve our problems, be it geoengineering, carbon sequestration or fusion – but wait, it gets worse.

At an artificial intelligence conference in Washington DC, the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently claimed that “[w]e’re not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we’re not organized to do it” and that we should just plunge ahead with AI, which is so huge an energy hog it’s prompted a number of tech companies to abandon their climate goals. Schmidt then threw out the farfetched notion that we should go all in on AI because maybe AI will somehow, maybe, eventually know how to “solve” climate, saying: “I’d rather bet on AI solving the problem than constraining it.”

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

Chris Bowen questions why gas companies who already produce energy should get windfall gain under opposition’s plan

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Labor says a Coalition pledge to offer subsidies to existing and new gas power plants makes “no sense” and would ensure fossil fuel plants that are already in the grid receive windfall gains.

In a speech to an Australian Pipelines and Gas Association Convention in Adelaide, the opposition’s climate change and energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, said that gas would be “here to stay” under the Coalition.

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Bring in ‘future homes standard’ or leave families at risk of higher bills and emissions for decades, MPs and experts say

Ministers must take steps now to ensure that all homes are built to the most efficient low-carbon standards, or risk locking households into higher bills and greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come, a group of MPs and experts have urged.

The government is mulling changes to the building regulations in England to bring in a “future homes standard” that would require all new homes to be built with low-carbon equipment such as heat pumps and solar panels.

International Energy Agency says transition to clean energy means there will be a surplus of oil, gas and coal

Fossil fuels could soon become significantly cheaper and more abundant as governments accelerate the transition to clean energy towards the end of the decade, according to the International Energy Agency.

The world’s energy watchdog has signalled a new energy era in which countries have access to more oil, gas and coal than needed to fuel their economic growth, leading to lower prices for households and businesses.