The Guardian

The climate crisis has exacerbated drought across Mexico. But female-led projects to build harvesting and filtration tanks are helping communities conserve what rain there is, and make it safe to drink
Words and photographs by Matteo Bastianelli

Techno-utopianism is popular precisely because it doesn’t challenge the status quo, and lets polluters off the hook

In seeking to prevent environmental breakdown, what counts above all is not the new things we do, but the old things we stop doing. Renewable power, for instance, is useful in preventing climate chaos only to the extent that it displaces fossil fuels. Unfortunately, new technologies do not always lead automatically to the destruction of old ones.

In the UK, for example, building new offshore wind power has been cheaper than building new gas plants since 2017. But the wholesale disinvestment from fossil fuels you might have expected is yet to happen. Since the UN climate summit last November, the government has commissioned one new oil and gas field, and reportedly plans to license six more. It has overridden the Welsh government to insist on the extension of the Aberpergwm coalmine. Similar permissions have been granted in most rich nations, even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a giant stingray, a lost tortoise and hungry monkeys

Ministers accused of ‘giving up’ on birds as they explore exemptions from duty to protect the animals

The government has given itself an “alarming loophole” to avoid protecting seabirds including puffins and gannets, a leaked document shows.

Campaigners have accused ministers of “giving up” on the UK’s seabirds as they plan to apply for an exemption to a legal duty to protect the rare species.

Analysis shows alarming level of benzene at fence-line of facilities in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Indiana and US Virgin Islands

A dozen US oil refineries last year exceeded the federal limit on average benzene emissions.

Among the 12 refineries that emitted above the maximum level for benzene, five were in Texas, four in Louisiana, and one each in Pennsylvania, Indiana and the US Virgin Islands, a new analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project revealed on Thursday.

Dairying is not simply unsustainable, it also violates Māori values – including those that call for us to respect the natural world

New Zealand’s dairy industry is under pressure. It is one of our biggest earners, accounting for roughly 3% of our GDP; and since cows were first brought here about 200 years ago, dairy farming has taken on cultural significance for Pākehā (NZ Europeans) especially.

But it is also attracting increasing scrutiny. As well as polluting our land and waterways, dairy is to blame for large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government has developed legislation to mitigate environmental pollution, but critics say it is not adequately addressing the harm dairying causes.

Philip McKibbin is a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand of Pākehā (New Zealand European) and Māori (Ngāi Tahu) descent

Oil companies and petrostates are investing heavily in fossil fuels, in defiance of global targets. They must be stopped

These are frightening times. It is shocking to learn that just a few months after the show of international common purpose at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, countries including the US, Canada and Australia are among those with the most destructive oil and gas projects, threatening to shatter the target of limiting global heating to 1.5C. A Guardian investigation has revealed that the world’s biggest fossil fuel firms have 195 “carbon bomb” projects that would each emit at least 1bn tonnes of CO2 – and that 60% are already under way. Only last month, the International Committee on Climate Change warned that the world is on course to overshoot the 1.5C target, prompting António Guterres, the UN secretary general, to describe governments investing in new fossil fuels as “dangerous radicals”. On Monday, a new forecast warned that the probability of one of the next five years exceeding the 1.5C limit was 50%.

In the face of these stakes, and this evidence, the actions of the world’s biggest energy companies are perplexing as well as enraging. Why are energy giants continuing to invest in fossil fuel projects capable of causing such colossal harm? One expert suggests “a form of cognitive dissonance” is behind the refusal or inability of governments, as well as businesses, to change course in spite of the risks. Another says the scale of planned production suggests oil companies are still in denial about global heating, whatever they publicly claim – or have “complete disregard for the more climate vulnerable communities, typically poor, people of colour and far away from their lives”. One climate activist attributed such recklessness to a “colonial mindset”, which could equally be described as genocidal given the severity of the expected consequences of unchecked heating.

Writers aren’t science experts, Grenville writes. But they might be able to influence their readers to cast their ballots for the climate

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I’ve been what you might call a passive climate change activist for many years. I’ve had the bumper stickers, I’ve made the donations, I’ve gone on the marches (my latest handmade sign said “Renewables=Jobs” – true, but not exactly catchy).

And of course I’ve wondered if I could write a novel about climate change that would electrify people into action. I’ve wrestled with a few ideas, but how could you possibly dramatise the thing? Darling, he whispered into her ear. Did you know that coal is the best carbon capture technology that’s ever been invented? Oh, she murmured, does that mean we shouldn’t be burning it?

Sludge used as crop fertilizer has contaminated soil, water, crops and cattle, forcing farmers to quit

Maine last month became the first state to ban the practice of spreading PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge as fertilizer.

But it’s largely on its own in the US, despite a recent report estimating about 20m acres of cropland across the country may be contaminated.

Congressional investigation reveals the lengths meat industry went to downplay risks to workers and lobby receptive Trump officials

Trump officials “collaborated” with the meatpacking industry to downplay the threat of Covid to plant workers and block public health measures which could have saved lives, a damning new investigation has found.

Internal documents reviewed by the congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis reveal how industry representatives lobbied government officials to stifle “pesky” health departments from imposing evidence-based safety measures to curtail the virus spreading – and tried to obscure worker deaths from these authorities.

Fatih Birol says ‘carbon bombs’, revealed in Guardian investigation, will not solve global energy crisis

The world’s leading energy economist has warned against investing in large new oil and gas developments, which would have little impact on the current energy crisis and soaring fuel prices but spell devastation to the planet.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), was responding to an investigation in the Guardian that revealed fossil fuel companies were planning huge “carbon bomb” projects that would drive climate catastrophe.

Huge creature found in Mekong River where planned dams threaten ‘devastating’ ecological damage

A team of marine biologists have welcomed the discovery of a huge endangered freshwater stingray during a recent expedition to a remote stretch of the Mekong River in Cambodia, though they warned the biodiversity of the area was under threat.

The stingray was accidentally caught by fishers in an 80-metre (260ft) deep pool in the Mekong in Cambodia’s north-eastern Stung Treng province. The visiting scientists helped return the animal alive.

While the $4tn global wellness industry bends over backwards to sell us dubious detox products, there is an accessible, easy, and free way to genuinely rid our bloodstreams of toxins

Among all the toxins in the Pandora’s Box of chemical pollutants that humans have released upon the world, PFAS are particularly disturbing.

PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are nicknamed “forever chemicals” for their ubiquity, persistence and toxicity. They are used in household items including non-stick pans, waterproof fabrics, and microwave popcorn bags, and can contaminate water, air, soil, crops and animal products. They accumulate in the blood, bones and tissues of living things and do not degrade. PFAS impair human immune systems, making us more susceptible to diseases – even those we’ve been vaccinated against. Researchers associate the chemicals with liver disease, obesity, thyroid disorders, and certain cancers, among other health problems. These observations generally pertain to the relatively few PFAS we have researched, including PFOA and PFOS; PFAS belong to a massive family of chemicals, thousands of them unstudied and potentially harmful.

Adrienne Matei is a freelance journalist

The case is believed to be the first enforcement action of its kind aimed at preventing the advance of the marbled crayfish

They have claws, 10 legs, can produce hundreds of clones of themselves and have escaped from confinement to potentially run amok across the United States. The ecological threat posed by the marbled crayfish has now prompted prosecutors to wield invasive species laws in an attempt to curb the spread of the peripatetic crustaceans.

An Ohio woman who sold hundreds of marbled crayfish online has pleaded guilty to offenses under the Lacey Act, a US law preventing the transport of certain wildlife across state lines, after raising the crayfish in a huge tank in her home and selling them to people across 36 different states.

Climate science may not be front and centre in the election campaign to date, but its impact on consumers – and voters – still rears its head

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Polls suggest voters want action, but the climate crisis – what it is doing to our world and what it demands in response – has not been front and centre in the election campaign. A search through the major party leaders’ public appearances over the past week reveals little-to-no discussion of climate science, how the country should adapt to deal with worsening extreme events or the news that 91% of reefs surveyed on the Great Barrier Reef recently bleached.

But climate change policy, and its impact on consumers, still rears its head. With nine days ago, here are some of the claims being made by Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese in press conferences, interviews and debates, and how they stack up.

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From fisheries collapse to dead rivers, official body urges government to urgently turn ambition into action

Environmental tipping points are fast approaching in the UK, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) has said.

Potential tipping points – where gradual decline suddenly becomes catastrophic – include loss of wildlife, fisheries collapse and dead, polluted rivers, the watchdog said. The OEP is a new official body set up after Brexit to hold the government to account. Its first report, published on Thursday, says ministers have shown ambition but that action is too slow.

Custodians of petroglyphs in remote north-west say Woodside’s $12bn ‘carbon bomb’ spells disaster for culture and climate

As the last of the sun’s rays curl away from the coast in Australia’s remote north-west, Josie Alec opens her arms and sings in traditional language to a mass of ochre-coloured rocks along Hearson’s Cove. But her voice competes with the low rumble of a gas production plant less than a kilometre away, its flared emissions lightly hazing the sky above the beach.

This is the duality of what First Nations people refer to as Murujuga country, home to one of the world’s largest and oldest collections of rock carvings as well as one of the largest new fossil fuel developments in Australia in a decade.

UN climate envoy says world cannot afford to derail progress because of energy crisis linked to invasion

The UN climate envoy Mark Carney has warned against deferring emissions reduction targets in reaction to the energy crisis linked to the war in Ukraine, saying it will only require more “radical” action in the future.

The former Bank of England governor said he recognised the impact sanctions on Russia were having on global energy supplies and the cost of living, but added that governments could not afford to derail climate progress that could help achieve the 1.5C limit on global heating.

The partnership of Chris Martin’s band with biofuel producer Neste has raised eyebrows about the green credentials of their new tour

Coldplay had a head full of dreams this week when they announced the details of a low-emission world tour driven by concerns for sustainability. Some of the green interventions are well-meaning, others are just gimmicks, such as a kinetic dance floor that generates electricity from the movement of fans. However, the detail of some of the proposed climate measures would appal even the mildly eco-minded.

Perhaps worst of all is the partnership with Neste – a Finnish oil refining and marketing corporation that will provide the band with “sustainable aviation fuels” for flights and “renewable diesel” for tour transportation and stage power generation.

Eleanor Salter writes about climate, culture and politics

Wales only UK nation to exceed 50% as households in England recycle less in 2020 than 2019

Recycling rates in England are falling and the government has failed to meet its target to recycle 50% of waste from households by 2020. But Wales has become a world leader, with the country recycling 56.5% of its household waste.

Household recycling rates in England went down from 46% in 2019 to 44% in 2020. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the Covid pandemic had disrupted collections in some areas.