The Guardian

It’s been a decade since I got on a plane, but global warming and chaotic airports mean it has been easy to stay on the ground

I haven’t been on a plane for a decade – since 2012, which would be nice to look back on as a halcyon time, if only to run screaming from the blazing fuselage of the present for a second. But the truth is, Boris Johnson was already mayor of London, and it was one of the 10 warmest years on record. That September, the Arctic sea ice shrank to its lowest extent recorded. The climate emergency was happening. It just hadn’t been declared yet.

That summer of 2012, also on record as the last time I felt strange stirrings known as national pride, I watched the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in the basement of a Krakow bar. Four months later, days after discovering I was pregnant with my first child, I took two long-haul flights and a sea plane to a new luxury resort in the most undiscovered part of the Maldives. For four nights. On a press trip.

Rewilding advocates say decision by royal estates is ‘an appallingly undemocratic affront to our futures’

The duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, two of the royal family’s largest portfolios of land, have snubbed tree campaigners who are calling for the royals to rewild their estates.

Rewilding advocates at the campaign group Wild Card have been meeting for months with the crown estate, which manages most of the royal land and pays the revenue into the Treasury. They say relations have been “really positive”.

Seaweed could help feed world and reduce climate crisis impact, Vincent Doumeizel tells Hay festival

Seaweed could help feed the world and reduce the impact of the climate emergency, a UN adviser on food has suggested.

Speaking at the Hay festival in Wales, Vincent Doumeizel suggested that the term “sea forest”, which is how seaweed is referred to in Norway, would be more appropriate, “because we would understand that we need to protect and preserve them as we do with all the land forests”.

Experts believe plants in Sussex and Kent were 'stolen to order’

A spate of thefts of rare orchids from sites in southern England has concerned scientists, who say endangered species may be at risk.

Orchid experts believe that the plants, from locations including in Sussex and Kent, may have been “stolen to order”.

Known as 'that sand girl' on TikTok, 24-year-old Franziska Trautmann is trying to help restore Louisiana's eroding coastline ... with glass sand. 

The state loses about an American football field's worth of land every 100 minutes because of coastal erosion, so Trautmann and her co-founder, Max Steitz, decided to take action and launch Glass Half Full, the only glass recycling facility in New Orleans.

So far the venture has diverted more than 2.2m lbs of glass from landfills, and the charity is working with scientists to expand its work to other parts of the world experiencing coastal erosion. 

Sand is the most exploited resource in the world after water but its use is largely ungoverned, meaning we are consuming it faster than it can be naturally replaced

• 50bn tonnes of sand and gravel extracted each year, finds UN study
• Green teen memes: how TikTok could save the planet
  

Katharine Hayhoe says the world is heading for dangers people have not seen in 10,000 years of civilisation

The world cannot adapt its way out of the climate crisis, and counting on adaptation to limit damage is no substitute for urgently cutting greenhouse gases, a leading climate scientist has warned.

Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy in the US and professor at Texas Tech University, said the world was heading for dangers unseen in the 10,000 years of human civilisation, and efforts to make the world more resilient were needed but by themselves could not soften the impact enough.

African delegation says proposed new law ignores local voices and could harm rather than save wildlife

Britain’s international environment minister, Zac Goldsmith, and celebrity anti-trophy campaigners like Ricky Gervais have been accused of neocolonialism by African community leaders, who warn they are ignoring the voices of people who live alongside elephants, lions and other wildlife.

The UK government is expected to bring forward a ban on the import of hunting trophies during this parliament, arguing that the new law will strengthen the conservation of endangered species.

Genetic testing has determined a single 4,500-year-old seagrass may have spread over 200 sq km of underwater seafloor – about 20,000 football fields

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About 4,500 years ago, a single seed – spawned from two different seagrass species – found itself nestled in a favourable spot somewhere in what is now known as Shark Bay, just off Australia’s west coast.

Left to its own devices and relatively undisturbed by human hands, scientists have discovered that seed has grown to what is now believed to be the biggest plant anywhere on Earth, covering about 200 sq km (77 sq miles, or about 20,000 rugby fields, or just over three times the size of Manhattan island).

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Amid accusations of greenwashing, the designer’s steel-tree gift to the Queen appears to be a dangerously inept heir to London’s other recent urban misfire

Baby boomers were complicit in the decay of our civic life and cultural fabric – and we must play a serious role in fixing it

I had the chance this month to spend a couple of weeks on an utterly wild and remote Alaskan shore – there was plenty of company, but all of it had fur, feathers or fins. And there was no way to hear from the outside world, which now may be the true mark of wilderness. So, bliss. But also, on returning, shock. If you’re not immersed in it daily, the tide of mass shootings, record heatwaves and corroded politicians spouting ugly conspiracies seems even more truly and impossibly crazy.

Camping deep in the wild is not for everyone, but there’s another way to back up and look at our chaos with some perspective – and that’s to separate yourself in time instead of space.

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College and the author most recently of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened

Exclusive: PM told there could be eight years’ decline before any gains despite already being at ‘rock bottom’

The government has set damaging and illogical targets for species recovery in England that could mean there is eight years of decline before any improvement, despite already being at “rock bottom”, scientists have warned the prime minister.

Twenty-three leading scientists from institutions including Oxford and Cambridge universities, the Natural History Museum, the Zoological Society of London and the RSPB have written to Boris Johnson expressing their alarm over the nature targets.

Why this report? Why now? Why did I get all those rolling eye emoji text messages?

• Is nitrous oxide a climate risk? Yes, but doctors say effective pain relief in childbirth should be the priority

When a new report suggested that people who use nitrous oxide when giving birth should be warned about the impacts on climate change, I felt the mild tremor of a collective groan uttered in unison across the country. More than one person sent me headlines accompanied by a rolling eye emoji.

Clearly the climate crisis is a pressing mattter of life or death and the future of all humanity. The staggering results of our federal election show that this is an issue about which Australians are deeply concerned. And many medical colleges are considering the effects of climate change on their patients, with the Australian Medical Association even issuing a call to arms.

The billions now going to fossil fuel exploitation could have funded efficiency measures that cut energy bills for good

Billions of pounds given away in a tax break for UK oil and gas exploitation could have permanently cut the energy bills of 2m homes by £342 a year if invested in insulation measures, according to a green thinktank.

Rishi Sunak announced the 91% tax break alongside a windfall tax on the huge profits of oil and gas companies last week. The E3G thinktank calculated that the tax break would hand between £2.5bn and £5.7bn back to the oil companies over three years, while an energy efficiency programme of £3bn over the same period would upgrade 2.1m homes making them less reliant on gas.

New data shows ‘mystifying’ lack of progress in post-Brexit pledge to curb bottom-trawling, two years after landmark legislation

More than 90% of Britain’s offshore marine protected areas are still being bottom-trawled and dredged, two years after analysis of the extent of destructive fishing exposed them as “paper parks”, according to data shared with the Guardian.

The UK’s network of marine parks, set up to safeguard vulnerable areas of the seabed and marine life, is a cornerstone of the government’s target to protect 30% of ocean biodiversity by 2030.

Ministers are running out of time to persuade EDF to apply for postponement of shutdown, say industry insiders

Ministers have just weeks to intervene to extend the life of the Hinkley Point B nuclear power station, industry sources have warned, as officials raise concerns over the danger of blackouts this winter.

The two reactors of the Somerset nuclear power station are due to be shut down on 8 July and 1 August, removing nearly a gigawatt of power generation capacity from the UK’s system – enough to power 1.5m homes – and as the nights draw in, the war in Ukraine is expected to weigh heavily on electricity supplies.

Queen’s Green Canopy scheme’s ‘platinum supporters’ include firms that have been connected to environmental harm, say campaigners

The Queen’s jubilee tree planting scheme has been sponsored by companies with links to deforestation, say campaigners.

Across the country, people have been asked to “plant a tree for the jubilee” in honour of the Queen’s 70 years on the throne.

UK scientists say carbon capture is ‘hard and expensive’ and focus must be on reducing emissions

Many of the UK’s top scientists working on carbon capture technologies do not believe they will be developed and scaled up in time to reach net zero and limit global heating to 1.5C.

Experts speaking at a Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub event in London warned that these techniques, including direct air capture, biofuels, biochar, afforestation and advanced weathering, are not a silver bullet and should make up just a fraction of the efforts to decarbonise.

Terminally ill and disorientated orca believed to have been suffering from disease not before seen in Europe

An ailing orca adrift in the River Seine has been found dead after a plan to guide it back to sea failed and scientists concluded it was in agonising pain and terminally ill.

The local French prefecture had said the orca, also known as a killer whale, would be euthanised to end its suffering.

Ministers from world’s biggest economies reach agreement that could shift estimated $33bn a year to clean energy sources

The world’s biggest economies are to stop funding any overseas fossil fuel development from the end of this year, in a move likely to choke off some of the investment in “carbon bombs” that are imperilling efforts to meet the world’s climate targets.

The agreement could shift about $33bn (£26bn) a year from fossil fuels to clean energy sources, according to analysts’ estimates.

Tiny island nation with no navy sets out bold ambition to protect 100% of its ocean, an area the size of Vietnam, from illegal fishing

The Pacific island state of Niue has announced that it will protect 100% of the ocean in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which spans 317,500 sq km (122,000 sq miles), roughly the area of Vietnam.

The water that surrounds one of the world’s largest raised coral atolls is the only place where the katuali is found – a sea snake that lives in the island’s honeycomb of underwater caves. Humpback whales migrate to Niue from Antarctica to give birth, spinner dolphins swim near the coast and Niue boasts the world’s highest density of grey reef sharks.