The Guardian

Institute of Chartered Foresters says 70% more staff must be recruited to meet current tree planting targets

When Kevin Martin was a child he spent days beneath the canopy of Hampshire woodlands while his father, a tree surgeon, scaled the heights of oak and ash above him.

Twenty years later, with a degree and with research for a master’s under way, Martin is in charge of tending to the 14,000 trees at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. With trees at the forefront of UK strategies to reach net zero by 2050, Martin and others like him are key professionals on the frontline of the fight to mitigate the impact of climate change and adapt to the changing conditions.

Photographer Callie Chee captures the weird and wonderful landscapes that spring to life in the dark

(Please do not pick or eat any mushrooms found growing wild)

Models indicate that there could be between 25 and 30 extreme events a year by mid-century

Millions across the US south-west are bracing for a weekend of sweltering heat as forecasts threaten record-setting high temperatures that will top 100F in several states.

Heat advisories and excessive heat warnings have been issued across portions of roughly half a dozen states and daily records could be broken in more than 75 cities.

Labour says leaked white paper suggesting more fish farming and venison ‘borders on preposterous’

• Analysis: Strategy shows no stomach for bold action

Boris Johnson’s new food strategy for England contains virtually no new measures to tackle the soaring cost of food, childhood hunger, obesity or the climate emergency, a leaked version of the white paper shows.

The strategy, seen by the Guardian and due to be published on Monday, was supposed to be a groundbreaking response to recommendations from the restaurateur Henry Dimbleby, who wrote two government-commissioned reports on obesity and the environment.

Renewable heating incentive was set up to help business, public sector and non-profit organisations

A minister, MPs and several aristocratic landowners have received thousands in public funds from a government subsidy intended to stimulate the green transition.

The renewable heating incentive was set up in 2014 to help businesses, public sector and non-profit organisations meet the cost of installing renewable heat systems by paying them a tariff for each unit of heat produced from renewable sources. A parallel system was set up for homes.

The Wye is being killed by toxic industrial chicken factories along its banks. Such disasters are happening all over the UK

The longer this goes on, the deeper the mystery becomes. It’s as if the public authorities had set out to destroy an entire region’s economy. Last year, a group of us tried to raise the profile of an astonishing scandal: the impending collapse of one of the most treasured and “protected” rivers in Europe, the Wye, which flows through Wales and England. We showed how chicken factories in the catchment are turning this beautiful river and its tributaries into open sewers.

The two county councils through which the river mostly flows, Powys and Herefordshire, have between them granted planning permission for giant steel barns (factories, in reality) that contain an estimated 20m birds. Many were approved on the grounds that they would probably have no significant environmental impact. Amazingly, at no point was the cumulative impact considered: every decision was taken as if in isolation.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Governments not listening to people with disabilities despite them being at high risk, say researchers

People with disabilities are being “systematically ignored” by governments around the world when it comes to the climate crisis, even though they are particularly at risk from the impacts of extreme weather, research has shown.

Few countries make provisions for the needs of people with disabilities when they make plans for adapting to the effects of climate breakdown, and none mention disabled people in their programmes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the first comprehensive review of the issue.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a new iguana, a nesting weaver and a rare albino giant tortoise

Extracting the chemical used in fertilisers from waste rather than mining it could also help reduce pollution

Sewage could provide a novel way of helping consumers with soaring food bills and reducing pollution in our waterways – if sewage plants separated out phosphorus, a vital ingredient of fertiliser, according to a new report.

Phosphorus, found naturally in all plants, is essential for growing plants but its use as a fertiliser is creating widespread pollution in developed countries, because much of it is wasted. Phosphorus is a leading cause of water pollution, as the runoff from fertiliser use in fields produces an excess of nutrients that upset the natural balance of rivers and ponds, leading to algae blooms that harm fish and plants.

US wildlife agency agrees to review protection for habitats after conservationists sue over mass die-offs from poor water quality

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has agreed to update critical habitat protections for manatees after legal pressure from environmental groups, as the animals continue to die in record numbers.

More than 1,000 manatees died in Florida last year, wiping out more than 10% of the state’s population, the deadliest year on record. The unusually high mortality rate for the threatened mammals has continued into 2022, with 562 deaths in the first five months.

Exclusive: Study finds people have ‘astonishing’ levels of compounds thought to disrupt hormones

A cocktail of chemical pollutants measured in people’s bodies has been linked to falling semen quality by new research.

Chemicals such as bisphenols and dioxins are thought to interfere with hormones and damage sperm quality, and the study found combinations of these compounds are present at “astonishing” levels, up to 100 times those considered safe.

New research shows the gut of the Zophobas morio beetle larvae contains enzymes capable of breaking down the plastic, which is difficult to recycle

Beetle larvae that can shred and eat polystyrene may provide alternative methods of breaking down and upcycling plastic waste, new research suggests.

The larvae of Zophobas morio, a species of beetle, are commonly known as superworms and contain several gut enzymes that are capable of digesting polystyrene, Australian scientists have found.

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Scientists are watching an area in Pacific Ocean that has been unusually cool – a signal current La Niña could linger

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Australia’s east coast could be hit by a rare “triple La Niña” that brings flooding rains and cooler weather for the third summer in a row, a senior US government scientist says.

Experts say the prospect of a triple La Niña is real, but there is disagreement between different computer models and Australia could yet avoid a return of summer floods.

Energy crisis has made Kent scheme aimed at unobtrusively building up solar output more timely

Tennis fans tucking into strawberries at Wimbledon this month may find their fruit has an unusual origin – a solar-powered greenhouse.

Transparent panels have been attached to the sides of glasshouses in Kent as part of a trial to build up solar power supplies without using more land.

Identification of Galápagos tortoise celebrated by scientists as a big deal for island’s biodiversity

A rare Galápagos species, the “fantastic giant tortoise”, long thought extinct, has been officially identified for the first time in more than a century in what scientists called a “big deal” for the famed islands’ embattled biodiversity.

The animal is the first Chelonoidis phantasticus to be seen since a male specimen was discovered by the explorer Rollo Beck during an expedition in 1906. The newcomer has been named Fernanda, after the Fernandina Island, a largely unexplored active volcano in the western Galápagos Archipelago that she calls home.

Jair Bolsonaro’s dog-whistle politics is risking the lives of Indigenous people and the reporters who tell their stories

It’s now more than four days since veteran Brazil correspondent Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Araújo Pereira disappeared in the Javari Valley, a remote part of the western Amazon thought to have the world’s highest concentration of uncontacted people.

Pereira, a longtime defender of Indigenous rights who previously worked for Funai, Brazil’s government Indigenous rights agency, had reportedly received threats for his work monitoring illegal activities in the region.

Researchers call for recognition of latest online strategies used to derail climate action

Climate policy is being dragged into the culture wars with misinformation and junk science being spread across the internet by a relatively small group of individuals and groups, according to a new study.

The research, released on Thursday, shows that the climate emergency – and the measures needed to deal with it – are in some cases being conflated with divisive issues such as critical race theory, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion access and anti-vaccine campaigns.

Elitism and hypocrisy: these posts focused on the alleged wealth and double standards of those calling for action, and in some cases referenced wider conspiracies about globalism or the “New World Order”. The study identified 199,676 mentions of this narrative on Twitter (tweets and retweets) and 4,377 posts on Facebook around the time Cop26 took place

Absolution: it found 6,262 Facebook posts and 72,356 tweets around Cop26 which absolved one country of any obligation to act on climate by blaming another. In developed western countries this often focused on the perceived shortcomings of China and, to a lesser extent, India, claiming they were not doing enough so there was no point in anyone acting.

Unreliable renewables: over a longer period – from 1 January to 19 November 2021 – the study found 115,830 tweets or retweets were shared, alongside 15,443 posts on Facebook, that called into question the viability and effectiveness of renewable energy sources.

We must restore our largely broken relationship with nature if we are to ensure the planet’s future – and our own

Asked to consider the value of animals, many people’s first thought would be about money. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, the price of dogs became a popular talking point. Others might think of the less tangible, but also very real, value they place on their relationships with companion animals, especially pets such as cats and dogs. Fewer would immediately consider the ways in which our entire civilisation rests on animals. The fact is, though, that our society and economy are embedded in a natural system that is maintained by the activities of animals, and without them, we would not be here.

Animals are vital to the functioning of the biosphere in innumerable ways. Their interactions with plants, fungi and microbes sustain the conditions on which we, along with all other life, depend. For example, the great whales that sit at the pinnacle of marine food webs are linked to some of the most fundamental processes that shape conditions in our world. They eat other marine creatures, including krill, and in the process take nutrients from deeper water to be released via their faeces into the ocean, where they fertilise blooms of planktonic algae.

European Chemical Agency’s positive assessment for continued sale of substance is flawed, say environmental campaigners

EU regulators dismissed key scientific evidence linking glyphosate to rodent tumours in a positive assessment they gave for continued sales of the substance last week, according to a new report by environmental campaigners.

Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used weedkiller and its EU relicensing has become a touchstone in a wider battle between environmentalists and agribusiness over the future of farming.

Even if Millmerran power station’s carbon capture plan succeeds, it will only eliminate 2.1% of emissions. Plus: nuclear still costlier than renewables

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The history of carbon capture and storage as a way to meaningfully cut greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels is littered with big and eye-wateringly expensive promises that have failed to deliver.

The new Nationals leader, David Littleproud, made a claim this week that some viewers may have taken to mean that one such CCS project was ready to go.