The Guardian

Poseidon Water sought to turn seawater into drinking water but activists said plan would devastate ecosystem on Pacific coast

A California coastal panel on Wednesday rejected a longstanding proposal to build a $1.4b seawater desalination plant to turn Pacific Ocean water into drinking water as the state grapples with persistent drought that is expected to worsen in coming years with climate change.

The state’s Coastal Commission voted unanimously to deny a permit for Poseidon Water to build a plant to produce 50m gallons of water a day in Huntington Beach, south-east of Los Angeles.

Group commissioned by mayor Sadiq Khan in early stages of move to bring nature back to capital

London will be “rewilded” with new nature reserves, pocket parks and a mass community movement to bring nature back to the capital, the Guardian can reveal.

A group of rewilding experts commissioned by the mayor, Sadiq Khan, are in the early stages of drawing up the proposal. The idea came from Ben Goldsmith, a financier and environment campaigner who is on the board of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Just a handful of mink breeders in Denmark express an interest in re-entering fur industry, even if the current ban is lifted next year

Danish mink breeders have turned their backs on the industry en masse after being forced to cull their animals over fears a Covid-19 mutation could pose a risk to human health.

In November 2020, Denmark, at that point the world’s largest mink producer, controversially announced it would cull approximately 15 million animals due to fears a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans could jeopardise future vaccines.

Environment agency says initial investigation into all 10 water firms suggests possible ‘serious non-compliance’ with law

A criminal investigation into water companies in England has uncovered suspected widespread illegal sewage discharges from treatment plants, the Environment Agency has revealed.

The investigation into more than 2,200 water treatment plants run by all 10 water companies is examining whether the firms breached legal regulations about when and how frequently they are allowed to release raw sewage into waterways.

Brutal heatwave in India and Pakistan also certain to have been exacerbated by global heating, scientists say

The massive and deadly floods that struck South Africa in April were made twice as likely and more intense by global heating, scientists have calculated. The research demonstrates that the climate emergency is resulting in devastation.

Catastrophic floods and landslides hit the South African provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape on 11 April following exceptionally heavy rainfall.

Hi-tech UK laboratory launched to save trees from threats including oak processionary moth, emerald ash borer and citrus longhorn beetle

The public are being urged to keep an eye out for any signs of disease in local trees, as the UK launches a hi-tech, £5.8m tree laboratory to fight the spread of pests and diseases.

The UK is especially vulnerable to the growing spread of plant pathogens because of warmer, wetter winters, and because it is a hub for global trade. The new research laboratory is set to address these threats by clamping down on pests in the UK and abroad, including the oak processionary moth, emerald ash borer and citrus longhorn beetle.

Analysis: Queensland flash floods have cut off communities and killed one woman, swept away in her car

Torrential rain has been hitting eastern Australia since Monday, with rainfall totals on the north-east coast widely achieving in excess of 100mm. In Yabulu, north of Townsville, there was major flooding on Tuesday as 196mm of rain fell within 24 hours. This was not the highest total recorded, however, with 244mm of rain falling on Tuesday at Mourilyan, near Innisfail on the Cassowary Coast.

The threat of heavy rain sank south across Queensland to the south-east, reaching Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast on Wednesday; stations in the south-east recorded up to 100mm, with a station in Dayboro recording 161mm. A further 100-150mm of rain fell on Friday across the south-east.

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

• Top Australian writers call for climate action to be at the centre of election
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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