The Guardian

Campaigners welcome move but say success depends on enforcement and global agreement on a treaty

Thailand has banned plastic waste imports over concerns about toxic pollution, as experts warn that failure to agree a global treaty to cut plastic waste will harm human health.

A law banning imports of plastic waste came into force this month in Thailand, after years of campaigning by activists. Thailand is one of several south-east Asian countries that has historically been paid to receive plastic waste from developed nations. The country became a leading destination for exports of plastic waste from Europe, the US, the UK and Japan in 2018 after China, the world’s biggest market for household waste, imposed a ban.

Waterways can protect biodiversity, help with water security and keep cities cooler, says Canal & River Trust

Protecting the UK’s canals is crucial for improving the nation’s resilience to climate change, campaigners have said.

A report by the Canal & River Trust charity found canals could play a “critical role” in biodiversity, decarbonisation and climate adaptation.

Approach could be used to limit outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue fever, which results in 390m cases annually worldwide

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Toxic male mosquitoes will poison females with their semen in a new population control method developed by Australian researchers.

The method involves genetically engineering males to produce spider and sea anemone venom proteins, which they inject into females during mating, reducing their lifespan.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

‘Future homes standard’ will not mandate replacing boilers with environmentally friendly alternative

The government is to scrap the 2035 ban on gas boilers in its new housebuilding standards.

The previous Conservative government had laid plans to phase out gas heating for homes by banning the sale of new gas boilers by 2035, so people replacing their gas boilers after that date would instead have to buy a heat pump or other environmentally friendly way of heating homes.

Exploring the aberration, absurdity, madness and ingenuity of skiing, an activity that raises both questions and concerns despite its global success. It continues to fascinate and intrigue in the face of social and environmental upheavals. There are more than 2,000 resorts scattered across the world, attracting hundreds of millions of skiers, but there are also profound questions about its future amid climate challenges and societal changes

While the EU and US hesitate, the UK can become world leader in this burgeoning – and cruelty-free – innovation

If the pet food industry were a country, it would rank as the world’s 60th biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. In countries such as the US, researchers estimate that pet food accounts for about a quarter of total meat consumption. And as the number of pets grows, the environmental impact looks set to increase. But the British government may have unlocked a solution. This year, the UK became the only country in Europe to approve the use of lab-grown meat in pet food.

Lab-grown meat may sound futuristic, but the process is actually straightforward. It starts with the harvesting of a small number of animal cells, then the cells are fed essential nutrients to help them replicate and grow, similar to a yeast culture on a petri dish. But unlike a whole living animal, there are fewer limitations on size, there are no welfare concerns, and the setup does not require such vast land, water and energy resources.

Lucy McCormick is an analytics manager at the Guardian and a writer on economics, politics and current affairs

Ports including in Saudi Arabia and the US projected to be seriously damaged by a metre of sea level rise

Rising sea levels driven by the climate crisis will overwhelm many of the world’s biggest oil ports, analysis indicates.

Scientists said the threat was ironic as fossil fuel burning causes global heating. They said reducing emissions by moving to renewable energy would halt global heating and deliver more reliable energy.

Factory closures highlight the turbulent shift to a green economy, exposing political challenges and the urgent need for a equitable move to net zero

One of the biggest political battles of the future began to take shape in 2024, yet it did not centre on Westminster. Instead, try Grangemouth in central Scotland, Port Talbot in south Wales and Luton in the south of England. Their stories were not front-page staples, but each was of huge significance – locally, nationally and economically.

Grangemouth is Scotland’s sole oil refinery, whose owners confirmed in September that it would shut, to be replaced by a terminal taking in imported fuel – with nearly 400 workers losing their jobs. In the last days of September, the only remaining blast furnace at Port Talbot was shut down, as part of a restructuring that will cost 2,800 employees their jobs. At the end of November, staff at Vauxhall in Luton were told the plant would shut, ending 120 years of the carmaker’s association with the town and putting between 1,100 and 2,000 jobs at risk. One result was two days of protests in the town a week before Christmas.

Affluent areas average as few 7,000 residents per public pool, while suburbs farther from the coast may have as many as 138,000

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis says it was a paradox: you can grow up in a country that prides itself on being a nation of swimmers yet never learn to swim.

So at 26, she decided to take swimming lessons and discovered the reason why.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Policymakers and insurers act as if Britain’s coastlines are fixed, but the waters are advancing faster than before

The increasing speed of sea level rise hardly seems to register with policymakers in Britain – even though with the UK weather getting more violent, destructive storm surges are increasingly likely. The future looks bleak for properties on fast-eroding cliffs and large areas of rich agricultural land on the east coast, already at or even below sea level.

The evidence that things are rapidly getting worse is clear. Sea levels have risen 24cm (9in) (7ft 3in) since 1880 but the rise has accelerated from an average of 1.4mm a year in the 20th century to 3.6mm annually by 2015. Previous conservative estimates of sea level rise of 60cm by the end of this century now look very optimistic and on current emission levels will be 2.2 metres by 2100 and 3.9 metres 50 years after that.

Volunteers’ data should be included in official monitoring reports to tackle pollution crisis, says Earthwatch

Citizen science testing of river water quality will expand this year in an attempt to make the data part of official monitoring of waterways, the head of an independent environmental research group has said.

The use of ordinary people across the country to test river water quality for pollutants including phosphates, nitrates and other chemicals has captured the imagination of thousands of volunteers. In 2024 more than 7,000 people took part in river testing “blitzes” run over two weekends by the NGO Earthwatch Europe. The research, using standardised testing equipment provided by the NGO and Imperial College London, gathered data from almost 4,000 freshwater sites across the UK.

Experts say sighting of orca in Puget Sound with second deceased calf is ‘devastating’ for ailing population

An apparently grieving killer whale who swam more than 1,000 miles pushing the body of her dead newborn has lost another calf and is again carrying the body, a development researchers say is a “devastating” loss for the ailing population.

The Washington state-based Center for Whale Research said the orca, known as Tahlequah, or J35, was spotted in the Puget Sound area with her deceased calf.

Pragmatism will win over purism, unless the government favours early closure for car manufacturers

The main timetable is set: no new petrol and diesel cars will be allowed to be sold in the UK after 2030, and sales of all new hybrids will be forbidden from 2035. But that phasing still leaves open the critical matter – for the automotive industry, and for a couple of manufacturers in particular – of which new hybrids will be allowed to be sold until the last day of 2034.

Just the variety that comes with a socket – plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs)? Or should old-style hybrids, such as the Toyota Prius, which have smaller batteries charged by a main internal combustion engine, also be permitted?

UK has more than halved amount of electricity generated from fossil fuels but gas still had largest share at 28%

The UK’s electricity was the cleanest it has ever been in 2024, with wind and solar generation hitting all-time highs, according to a report.

The analysis by Carbon Brief found that in the past decade the UK had more than halved electricity generated from coal and gas and doubled its output from renewables.

Endangered spectacled flying foxes and vulnerable grey-headed flying foxes are ‘astonishing’ animals but misinformation is rife

One of the most spectacular sights at Adelaide’s Womadelaide music festival is not on the official lineup.

As dusk approaches, thousands of grey-headed flying foxes begin chattering and stretching their wings as they prepare to ascend from their roosts in Botanic Park and set out in search of food.

State’s beloved but under-pressure sea cows were barely recorded in the area before seas warmed in the late 1700s

Manatees, long considered among Florida’s most beloved and enchanting inhabitants, are not native at all, and only came to the Sunshine state for warm temperatures and clear blue waters like any other visitor, researchers have found.

The surprise revelation by scientists at the University of South Florida (USF) and George Washington University (GWU) upends decades of thinking about the origins of the threatened species, once plentiful around the Florida peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.

Society to retire plants no longer suited to UK’s changing climate after 14% fewer days of ground frost recorded

Fig and almond trees are thriving in Britain as a result of fewer frosts, the Royal Horticultural Society has said.

The lack of frost, one of the effects of climate breakdown, means plants used to warmer climes have been doing well in RHS gardens. Almond trees from the Mediterranean were planted at Wisley in Surrey several years ago, and without frost this year have fruited well for the first time.

I want to give my kids that overarching sense of a single summer going on all through childhood, a door to a memory they can open any time

• More summer essentials
• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

You never step into the same river twice. But you can step into the same ocean, or so it seems, each January when we take that first swim: ducking our heads under a wave to feel the rush of cold and the sting of salt, shaking like dogs when we emerge, washed clean of the year just gone.

When I was a child, it was Phillip Island: a green canvas tent in my grandfather’s back yard; a chipped foam surfboard rasping against my skin as I lay on it, just floating in the channel between the island and the mainland, never daring to go into the actual surf. It was the acrid smoke of mozzie coils and the oily texture of the battered flake from the fish and chip shop. Showers under the tank stand; the sun burning our skin until it peeled.

Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads

Jenny Sinclair is a Melbourne journalist and writer of creative nonfiction and fiction

With the climate crisis hitting Britain, we must build resilience at a local level by rewilding, saving water and fighting floods

Imagine, for a moment, if 2025 was the year that the UK achieved its legally binding targets of reducing dangerous carbon emissions to zero. Imagine if the Extinction Rebellions of 2019 had achieved their goal, and the government had bowed to the pressure of climate activism to meet this target. In this counterfactual reality, the world would be much saner than our own. But as the new year arrives, we’re forced to confront a stark reality. Britain is nowhere near achieving zero carbon in the next 12 months.

When Extinction Rebellion (XR) was founded in 2018, the 2025 target was conceived as a clarion call to action. It was based on the need to decarbonise quickly, to mitigate the worst impacts of climate decline, and to fulfil our historical responsibility as one of the world’s largest polluters. With the new year upon us, it’s clear that decarbonisation at the scale and speed we imagined isn’t a feasible goal within our existing political and economic frameworks. And this failure brings with it some uncomfortable truths that everyone concerned about the climate crisis must face head-on. And that means, in effect, everyone: for even if you don’t feel affected by this crisis, it still affects you.