The Guardian

Lawns and gardens account for 60% of household water use in arid areas of the US. This is unsustainable

As a heatwave drags across the United States, local and state governments are scrambling to find solutions to the threats brought by record high temperatures. Washington DC and Philadelphia have declared heat emergencies, activating public cooling centers and other safety measures across their cities, while Phoenix and Los Angeles continue to push programs to plant new trees in working-class neighborhoods with little canopy coverage. Many of these short-term solutions rely on water, a dangerous reality given that nearly 50% of the country is experiencing some form of drought, with the amount of Americans affected by drought increasing 26.8% since last month. This looming threat has pushed one state, Nevada, to seek a more long-term solution: the banning of non-functional lawns.

Lawn grass takes up 2% of all land in the United States. If it were a crop, it would be by far the single largest irrigated crop in the country. Nevada has, due to necessity, taken an obvious but large step in alleviating some of the more immediate symptoms of the climate crisis and bought themselves more time for other measures. It is time for the federal government to push all states to do the same and create incentives to ensure that it happens quickly and in a manner that doesn’t force working-class Americans to foot the bill.

Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian

In Challock in Kent the taps ran dry for six days, causing the school and gastropub to close

John Ramsden surveyed the parched village green, its yellow grass withered in the midday sun, and wondered what lay ahead. “People are worried it’ll happen again.”

The “again” refers to life without a water supply. Ramsden’s village of Challock, perched in the uplands of the Kent downs, has already survived one bout without mains water this summer.

Critics say Mark Pritchard’s £46,800-a-year role with Linden Energy is ‘highly concerning’

A Tory MP has been urged to quit his second job as a £325-an-hour adviser to a US fossil fuel firm after the company was accused of using “classic climate denial” tactics to delay action on the climate crisis.

Mark Pritchard, 55, Conservative MP for the Wrekin in Shropshire, took on a role providing “strategic communications advice” to Linden Energy Holdings in May, official records show. He will be paid £46,800 a year for working 12 hours a month through his consulting company, Map Advisory.

Hosepipe ban and compulsory water metering needed, say advisers, as nation braces for drought

A national hosepipe ban should be implemented as a national priority along with compulsory water metering across the UK by the end of the decade.

That is the key message that infrastructure advisers have given the government as the nation braces itself for a drought that is threatening major disruption to the nation. Failure to act now would leave Britain facing a future of queueing for emergency bottled water “from the back of lorries”.

‘It’s the global centre of diversity,’ says insect scientist who found 27 species of ant in two days in Kakadu national park

Alan Andersen has been collecting and recording specimens of Australian ant species for 40 years with about 8,000 of them glued to cardboard triangles in a government laboratory in Darwin in the country’s far north.

Each year hundreds of specimens are added to the collection, most of them likely new species that don’t even have formal scientific names.

Any new coal and gas projects are incompatible with effective climate action. This egregious compromise has to stop now

I’ve never felt more helpless as a parent than I did during the black summer bushfires.

Rushing my two-year-old son to hospital, I was overwhelmed with worry: there was no escape from the toxic smoke, even where we lived in inner-city Sydney. It went on and on. As any parents would be, we were terrified about what the next few days would hold.

Fewer than 340 North Atlantic right whales remain and vessel strikes are among the biggest threats to the species

Vessels off the US east coast must slow down more often to help save a vanishing species of whale from extinction, the federal government said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made the announcement via new proposed rules designed to prevent ships colliding with North Atlantic right whales.

Green sea turtle hatchling was missing a flipper when it was found lying on its back in a rockpool and taken to Taronga zoo

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A baby green sea turtle rescued from a Sydney beach had eaten so much plastic that it took six days for the contents to be excreted, according to Taronga zoo’s wildlife hospital.

The 127-gram hatchling was found lying on its back in a rockpool near Sydney’s Tamarama beach. It was missing one of its four flippers, had a chip in another, and had a hole in its shell.

The state of environment report is grim reading. Nightmare stuff for those of us who care. But surprising? Not at all

I’m very grateful for the handful of days I spent with a senior Yuin lore man. He taught many of us to live by three virtues: patience, tolerance and respect. Simple to say, but difficult to master and rare to see embodied. The lessons of patience and tolerance came hard to me, for I’m neither by nature. But I’m getting better, Unk, I promise, at least on good days when no one argues with me too much.

A few months before he passed into his Dreaming, I called him. I was worked up about the way fire was being used for hazard reduction burning. The fires I was seeing were hot, exposing the Earth, making her vulnerable to erosion during rains, scorching old trees and causing a germination flush of shrubs and young trees which, ironically, would rapidly replace the forest’s fuel loads.

The rapper’s explanation made his plane’s short hop flights even more of a climate disaster, critics pointed out

Drake, the rapper, has attempted to defend his use of a large private plane for a series of flights that lasted less than 20 minutes – by revealing that the aircraft was being moved to a storage location with no passengers on board.

The Canadian music star and several other celebrities, including the socialite and business owner Kylie Jenner, have recently been attacked online for using their private jets for short journeys that could easily be undertaken by car or public transport.

Native wildlife will be reintroduced across Europe in a bid to reduce atmospheric carbon and promote tourism

A European environmental organisation is looking to expand its number of rewilding landscapes – areas where endangered wildlife is reintroduced and protected – after being awarded a grant of £4.1m.

The grant has been pledged towards Rewilding Europe in hopes of scaling up rewilding efforts throughout several parts of the European continent.

The Biden administration will work around court ruling by setting new limits on ozone and coal ash to hasten closing of coal plants

The US Environmental Protection Agency plans to use new limits on traditional pollutants such as ozone and coal ash to encourage the retirement of the nation’s remaining coal-fired power plants, according to EPA chief Michael Regan.

The approach reflects how the Biden administration intends to forge ahead with goals to decarbonize the power sector despite the recent ruling from the supreme court limiting the agency’s ability to impose sweeping climate regulations.

Interviewing Jim for a biography revealed there was far more to him – and his influence on the modern world – than almost anyone realises

In science and life, the reward for a curious mind is to look for one thing and find another that is more interesting. That was how James Lovelock – conceiver of the Gaia theory – explained the outlook that made him one of the most influential thinkers of the past century, and he encouraged me to apply the same approach in interviewing him over the past two years for a biography.

What it revealed was that, even beyond the laudatory obituaries and tributes that followed his death at 103, there was far more to Jim – and his influence on the modern world – than almost anyone realises.

Naomi Klein and Caroline Lucas among signatories to letter voicing concerns over country’s hosting of climate summit

A hundred days before the Cop27 summit is due to start in Sharm el-Sheikh, a group of environmentalists and activists have expressed alarm over Egypt’s ability to host the event successfully because of its poor record on human rights, as thousands of prisoners of conscience remain behind bars.

“We are deeply concerned that [a successful conference] will not be possible due to the repressive actions of the Egyptian government,” they said. “Indeed, it seems more likely at this point that the conference will be used to whitewash human rights abuses in the country.”

Nepalese population of Bengal tigers has nearly tripled in 12 years and conflict with humans is increasing

Nepal’s tiger population has nearly tripled in 12 years, the country’s prime minister has announced. But concerns about the human cost of the big cat’s recovery are growing after a rise in fatal attacks.

From a low of 121 in 2010, the Nepalese population of Bengal tigers has risen to 355, according to the latest survey, revealed by the prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, to mark International Tiger Day on Friday.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow our biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features.

Ban introduced for Hampshire and Isle of Wight after driest July in England since 1911

Southern Water has become the first mainland UK utilities company to announce drought measures, including a hosepipe ban, after record dry temperatures across the country.

A hosepipe ban will be implemented in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight to protect the River Test and River Itchen as they hit low levels owing to lack of rainfall. About 1.5 million people are expected to be affected by the measures.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a released spider monkey, deep sea creatures and a jagged ambush bug

Most of the world’s mountain glaciers are retreating because of the climate crisis, but those in the European Alps are especially vulnerable. Smaller and with less ice cover, this year they are on track for their highest loss of mass in at least 60 years of record keeping

From the way 45-year-old Swiss glaciologist Andreas Linsbauer bounds over icy crevasses, you would never guess he was carrying 10kg of steel equipment needed to chart the decline of Switzerland’s glaciers.

Glaciologist Andreas Linsbauer and assistant Andrea Millhaeusler drill a hole at a measuring point on the Pers glacier, near the Alpine resort of Pontresina

Fears that turning muddy route BR-319 into an all-season road will make it an artery for illegal logging and deforestation

Brazil’s environmental authority has granted an initial permit to allow a major highway to be paved through the centre of the Amazon rainforest, the minister of infrastructure said, in a move that threatens to increase deforestation.

On the campaign trail, Brazil’s rightwing president, Jair Bolsonaro, had pledged to repave the road, called BR-319, that would connect the largest Amazon city of Manaus year-round to the rest of Brazil.

But the senator’s insistence on more fossil fuel drilling was called a ‘climate suicide pact’ by one expert

Climate advocates reacted with surprise and delight to Joe Manchin’s decision to back a sweeping bill to combat the climate crisis, with analysts predicting the legislation will bring the US close to its target of slashing planet-heating emissions.

The West Virginia senator, who has made millions from his ownership of a coal-trading company, had seemingly thwarted Joe Biden’s hopes of passing meaningful climate legislation – only to reveal on Wednesday his support for a $369bn package to support renewable energy and electric vehicle rollout.