The Guardian

Lewes council passes motion recognising Sussex river’s rights to protection, amid growing concerns over pollution of waterways

The River Ouse is on course to be the first river in England to be granted legal rights, as part of a growing movement to bolster protection for nature through the law.

Lewes district council passed a rights of river motion acknowledging the rights of nature as a way of improving the health of local rivers by giving them similar protection to people, and agreed there was “a case to be made for considering our interactions with our local waterways”.

More than 60 US scientists, including James Hansen, renowned former Nasa climate researcher, sign open letter

The controversial concept of purposely deflecting the sun’s rays to cool down an overheating Earth should be further studied, according to a group of scientists headed by James Hansen, the renowned former Nasa climate researcher.

An open letter from more than 60 scientists across the US, Canada and Europe warns that it is “increasingly unlikely” the world will remain below 2C of heating beyond pre-industrial times, due to a failure to slash greenhouse gas emissions, requiring a “rigorous, rapid scientific assessment” of previously outlandish proposals for solar geoengineering to provide rapid cooling.

A global pandemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza is driving deaths in the egg industry. And factory farming is largely to blame

The increased cost of eggs has been in the news, but the cause has largely been absent in mainstream media. A global pandemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), a form of bird flu (H5N1), has resulted in the deaths of over 43 million hens in the egg industry, causing a drop in the supply of eggs and higher prices for consumers. While industry and government officials are feverishly working on getting this outbreak under control, the more significant issue is that confining animals by the billions in cruel and stressful conditions exacerbates the spread of disease. The problem is getting worse, and agribusiness needs to stop distracting consumers with messages about high egg prices and be held accountable for its irresponsible conduct.

On factory farms across the US, animals used to produce meat, milk and eggs for human consumption are crowded by the thousands in unsanitary conditions, and they’re fed a steady diet of pharmaceuticals to ward off the resulting illness. This helps keep animals productive and alive long enough to reach market, benefiting agribusiness in the short term, but it is contributing to the development of more virulent forms of resistant pathogens that jeopardize the wellbeing of both human and nonhuman animals. As a study published in 2018 warned: “The golden age of antibiotics (the 1950s through 1970s) marked the beginning of the arms race between humans and bacteria. Antimicrobial resistance is now among the greatest threats to human health.”

With little rain forecast for spring and reservoirs still not refilled, drought could be worse than last year

The government risks sleepwalking into drought, experts have said, after England experienced an extremely dry February with very little rain forecast for spring.

Last year, most of England was plunged into drought conditions, with farmers struggling to plant and harvest crops, and hosepipe bans in action across the country. Water companies were preparing to take drastic action, including banning the filling of public swimming pools and cleaning non-domestic buildings.

As this cold British winter recedes, every day brings change, and with it a reminder of the beauty and resilience of the natural world

This weekend, I sowed the first of my seeds of the season. Five varieties of tomato and two different kinds of aubergine. I’m not one for sowing seeds early, but tomatoes and aubergines need every day of the growing season in this country to offer up the best possible harvest. Last summer, the tomatoes were incredible: they thrived in that mind-bending heatwave. They more than made up for the year before when blight obliterated every plant before even one tomato had dared to ripen. No two years are ever the same in the veg patch.

Gardeners and growers are well versed in the nature of change. Understanding how the shifting seasons and weather patterns affect our plants enables us to determine when our interventions will be most timely. This year, gardeners at the Royal Horticultural Society, who have been studying buds across the country, are reportedly expecting a bumper blossom in spring. The combination of last year’s heat and light with the cold snap this February is expected to produce ideal conditions for flowering.

Claire Ratinon is an organic food grower and writer

Pacific island country will put resolution to UN general assembly seeking opinion on international legal obligations that countries have to act on the crisis

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Australia will co-sponsor Vanuatu’s historic bid for the international court of justice to rule on the climate crisis, including the legal consequences for causing significant environmental harm.

The Pacific island country will soon put a resolution to the UN general assembly seeking an opinion on the international legal obligations that countries have to act on the climate crisis.

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Exclusive: company plans to sell carbon and biodiversity credits in endangered gorilla habitat and Congo basin rainforest as alternative to drilling for fossil fuels

A New York investment firm is to launch a $400m (£334m) bid for oil concessions in the Congo basin rainforest and Virunga national park with plans to turn them into conservation projects, the Guardian can reveal.

EQX Biome, a biodiversity fintech company, has sent an expression of interest to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) government for 27 oil exploration blocks put up for auction last July, some of which are in critical ecosystems.

Patients in New Brunswick with array of symptoms ‘show signs of exposure to glyphosate’, says neurologist

A neurologist who believes his patients are suffering from a suspicious illness has pleaded with the Canadian government to carry out environmental testing he thinks will show the involvement of the herbicide glyphosate.

For more than two years, dozens of people in the Canadian province of New Brunswick have experienced a distressing array of neurological symptoms, initially prompting speculation that they had developed an unknown degenerative illness – and that figure is believed to be far higher than official reports.

Absence of long-term plan could deter investors or lead them to increase prices, says National Audit Office

Ministers’ efforts to tackle the energy bills crisis have left the UK at risk of missing a key target to source green power and are threatening the country’s net zero goal, the government spending watchdog has said.

The government said in 2021 it wanted all electricity to be generated from low-carbon sources by 2035, a pillar in the plan to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

An unusual feeding technique only recently observed by scientists was documented nearly 2,000 years ago, a study suggests

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Mysterious whale feeding behaviour only documented by scientists in the 2010s has been described in ancient texts about sea creatures as early as two millennia ago, new research suggests.

In 2011, Bryde’s whales in the Gulf of Thailand were first observed at the surface of the water with their jaws open at right angles, waiting for fish to swim into their mouths. Scientists termed the unusual technique, then unknown to modern science, as “tread-water feeding”. Around the same time, similar behaviour was spotted in humpback whales off Canada’s Vancouver Island, which researchers called “trap-feeding”.

An unusual whale feeding technique first documented by scientists in the 2010s may have actually been described in ancient texts two millennia ago, researchers say. Researchers from Flinders University identified striking parallels between the behaviour of tread-water feeding and a sea creature named hafgufa from 13th century Old Norse texts. It is thought hafgufa can be traced back to the aspidochelone, a sea monster that first appeared in the ancient Greek text Physiologus. 'Definitive proof for the origins of myths is exceedingly rare and often impossible, but the parallels here are far more striking and persistent than any previous suggestions,' the researchers noted.

• Research reveals climate crisis is driving a rise in human-wildlife conflicts
• Record number of dolphins wash up on France’s Atlantic beaches
• Going to see a man about a dog: canine DNA tests lead to family reunions

Wood burning is one of biggest sources of small particle pollution in Britain, having doubled in a decade

An influential parliamentary committee is likely to consider arguments for a ban on domestic wood burning in urban areas this parliament, owing to concerns over its growing impact on air quality.

Philip Dunne, the chair of the environmental audit committee, said: “Air quality is something we are likely to look at before the end of this parliament. It’s a serious issue.”

Draft plan addresses inflated claims about products’ environmental credentials

Companies will have 10 days to justify green claims about their products or face “effective, proportionate and dissuasive” penalties, under a draft EU crackdown on greenwashing seen by the Guardian.

Inflated claims by firms about their products’ environmental bona fides have grown along with public awareness of global heating in recent years.

Complaint filed against retail giant after an experiment found that the teabags did not biodegrade after a year buried in soil

A team of researchers has filed a complaint against Tesco, saying its “biodegradable” teabags do not fulfil that claim following an experiment that involved burying them in soil for a year to see what happened.

Dr Alicia Mateos-Cárdenas from University College Cork (UCC) set out to investigate how well teabags advertised as biodegradable broke down. She buried 16 Tesco Finest Green Tea with Jasmine pyramid teabags in garden soil. However, when the teabags were dug up, they remained intact.

Australian Academy of Science report says country is behind others in carbon dioxide removal and a nationally coordinated approach is urgently needed

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Australia should set targets for the amount of carbon dioxide that could be pulled permanently from the atmosphere using “carbon drawdown” techniques like tree planting and direct air capture, according to a report from the Australian Academy of Science.

A national coordinated approach is urgently needed to promote projects that remove carbon dioxide from the air, the report says, with a lack of policies seeing Australia fall behind other countries.

Almost one-third of homes have panels, the highest in the world, says SunWiz, and will soon outpace capacity from coal

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Australia’s rooftops now boast 20 gigawatts of solar panels and will soon have the capacity to produce more electricity than the country’s entire coal industry, according to the industry consultancy SunWiz.

Almost one in three Australian households have solar photovoltaics – or solar panels - the highest penetration in the world. Queensland had the highest share of solar panels installed on dwellings deemed suitable for the technology with an 82% penetration, ahead of South Australia’s 78%, New South Wales’ 51% and Victoria’s 43%.

Were we able to perceive afresh the sheer scale of fossil fuel impact we might be horrified, but because this is an old problem too many don’t see it as a problem

If fossil fuel use and impact had suddenly appeared overnight, their catastrophic poisonousness and destructiveness would be obvious. But they have so incrementally become part of everyday life nearly everywhere on Earth that those impacts are largely accepted or ignored (that they’ve also corroded our politics helps this lack of alarm). This has real consequences for the climate crisis. Were we able to perceive afresh the sheer scale of fossil fuel impact we might be horrified. But because this is an old problem too many don’t see it as a problem.

Human beings are good at regarding new and unfamiliar phenomena as dangerous or unacceptable. But long-term phenomena become acceptable merely because of our capacity to adjust. Violence against women (the leading form of violence worldwide) and slower forms of environmental destruction have been going on so long that they’re easy to overlook and hard to get people to regard as a crisis. We saw this with Covid-19, where in the first months most people were fearful and eager to do what it took to avoid contracting or spreading the disease, and then grew increasingly casual about the risks and apparently oblivious to the impacts (the WHO charts almost 7 million deaths in little over three years).

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses

Popularity of sport utility vehicles driving higher oil demand and climate crisis, say experts

The continued global rise in sales of SUVs pushed their climate-heating emissions to almost 1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.

The 330m sport utility vehicles on the roads produced emissions equivalent to the combined national emissions of the UK and Germany last year. If SUVs were a country, they would rank as the sixth most polluting in the world.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall leads letter to secretaries of state voicing concerns government will renege on promises to lift ban

Fears that the government is quietly planning to renege on promises to lift the ban on onshore windfarms in England have prompted a large group of green campaigners, business leaders and prominent figures to protest to ministers.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the chef and environmental campaigner, has led a letter to secretaries of state, signed by conservation groups, academics and business people who are concerned that the pledges to free up planning restrictions are being quietly subverted.

Changing habitats and behaviours lead to interactions with a negative outcome for wildlife and humans

From blue whales colliding with ships to African elephants raiding crops in villages, the climate crisis is causing a rise in conflicts that lead to injury or death for humans and wildlife, new research shows.

The climate crisis is making food, water and healthy habitats harder to come by, forcing animals and human populations into new ranges or previously uninhabited places. It is also changing the way they behave. This means a rise in human-wildlife conflicts, as well as damage to personal property and loss of livelihoods for people, according to a review paper led by the University of Washington.