The Guardian

This extreme heat is just the beginning. We should be scared – and channel this emotion into action

• Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL and a climate activist.

There’s no getting around it, the UK’s once equitable climate is falling apart. We are now firmly on course for hothouse Britain and the signs are all around us. Just three years ago, the mercury hit 38.7C (101.7F) in Cambridge – then an all-time record. A year later, meteorologists at the UK Met Office mocked-up a weather forecast for 2050, showing 40C-plus temperatures across much of the UK.

But the speed of climate breakdown is such that this future is already upon us. On Monday, the Met Office’s first ever red extreme heat warning comes into force for much of England, as ferocious 40C-plus temperatures threaten to overwhelm ambulance services and A&E departments, and potentially bring about thousands of deaths.

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL and a climate activist. His latest book, Hothouse Earth: an Inhabitant’s Guide is published on 4 August

Prof Ian Chubb, who is leading a review of the controversial scheme, says there are also credible voices defending it

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The former Australian chief scientist charged with investigating the country’s divisive carbon credit system says academics who have described it as a fraud and a sham are “serious people”.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Prof Ian Chubb said there were also credible voices defending the scheme and he would need to carefully weigh the evidence.

NSW and Victorian governments say at least four refuelling stations will be built along Hume Highway

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The New South Wales and Victorian governments will spend $20m on hydrogen refuelling stations along Australia’s busiest freight highway in a push to see more zero-emissions technology used in the heavy-vehicle industry.

In a joint announcement the two governments say they will each spend $10m on grants to manufacture about 25 hydrogen-fuelled trucks and at least four refuelling stations along the 840km Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne.

New methods for tackling their spread hold out hope for more humane management of habitats

As anyone in mainland Britain who has ever attempted to grow berries or nuts – or indeed feed the birds – will know, doing so is tantamount to an opening move in a game of chess with local grey squirrels, a game the squirrels tend to win. Grey squirrels are also partial to the occasional bird’s egg or fledgling, and enjoy stripping and eating the bark of young broadleaf trees, which can either kill the trees or leave them open to infection. This, quite apart from affecting biodiversity and landscape, harms the timber industry. The loss – in damaged timber, lost carbon revenue and tree replacements – is not insignificant: £37m a year in England and Wales.

Greys (Sciurus carolinensis), introduced from North America in 1876, have almost replaced native red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) by outcompeting their British counterparts for food and habitat. They are larger and more robust, and immune to squirrelpox, while reds are not. About 3 million grey squirrels now live in the UK; the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the grey squirrel among the top 100 most harmful invasive species in the world.

The change, to be rolled out this week, will leave customers to judge whether goods are still fine to eat

Marks & Spencer is planning to remove “best before” labels from 300 varieties of fruit and vegetables in its stores to cut food waste.

The change, to be rolled out this week, will rely on customers using their judgment to determine whether goods are still fine to eat. The measure will affect 85% of the supermarket’s fresh produce offering.

First continent-wide meeting aims to set out plans to halt and reverse habitat and species loss in protected areas on land and sea

African leaders will gather in the Rwandan capital this week for the first continent-wide meeting to set out plans for the conservation of nature across Africa.

The IUCN Africa Protected Areas Congress (Apac) in Kigali will attract close to 3,000 delegates, including protected area directors from the continent’s 54 countries, youth leaders and Indigenous and community representatives, to discuss the role of protected areas in conserving nature, promoting sustainable development, and safeguarding the continent’s wildlife.

Construction of thousands of new homes has sucked away groundwater, killed trees and emptied ponds

Clive Hayden’s family has owned farmland at Larksfield Nursery in Cambridgeshire for about 70 years.

In recent years, the farm in Longstanton was growing tens of thousands of flowers and plants for sale at the New Covent Garden flower market, the colourful and historical wholesaler in the heart of London.

Environmentalists, farmers and commercial hunters are all calling on the state to end protection of an animal introduced 190 years ago

On a farm in Tasmania’s central midlands, Scott Chorley crouches in the short grass. He fires a single shot. It rings across the flat pasture, hitting a fallow deer clear between the eyes. It’s his 50th for the evening – and almost 400th this year. Every year, Chorley, one man in a team of seven commercial hunters, shoots about 900 deer. He then leaves them to rot.

“I just kill them and leave them on the ground,” he says.

Tasmania’s giant kelp has all but vanished, but worldwide restoration efforts provide hope the precious habitats can be rejuvenated

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The thick underwater forests off Tasmania’s east coast used to be so dense they were marked as shipping hazards on nautical charts. Thriving stands of giant kelp, which grows up to 40 metres high, once provided habitat for fur seals, seahorses, weedy sea dragons, rock lobsters, abalone and fish.

Since the 1960s, Tasmania’s giant kelp has all but vanished. Despite the rapid speed at which the brown algae grows – up to half a metre a day – around 95% has been killed off by warm waters pushed southwards by the east Australian current.

Officials raised concerns water level targets would not ensure river health or meet needs of downstream communities, documents show

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The Perrottet government has been warned by its own advisers that proposed flood plain harvesting rules will not adequately protect the environment or the needs of downstream communities in the Murray Darling Basin.

Documents obtained through parliament by independent MLC Justin Field show the government received advice that proposed targets meant to ensure river health were too low.

Tomorrow, as we seek shelter from a burning sun, climate change will feel all too real. Britain has suffered ever more vicious storms and floods over the past few years but the next couple of days will drive home the menacing discontinuity with our idea of normal, a step change in our collective awareness. The expected heat – temperatures that may exceed 40C warns the Met Office – are not only a record, but life-threatening.

It will start to change the politics of climate change. Until now, the green case has been propelled by the young, the progressive and the environmentally passionate, with the majority accepting the argument but without great heart. It’s OK to be green as long as the costs and changes in our lifestyles are far in the future, and any wind farms aren’t built near us – an opening the climate-sceptic right is exploiting to try to put a halt to what it considers backdoor socialism.

Sarah Suplina has long been fascinated with the birds flitting around in her back yard in Connecticut. The artist decided to capture them in collage form: painting thick watercolour paper, cutting it with scissors and knives and layering everything together using extra-strong glue. “I want my work to capture the beauty of each bird, along with some of his or her natural surroundings,” she says. As the series evolved, Suplina started looking further afield to create hens and sparrow, parrots and kingfishers. “I have discovered so many different, wonderful birds to create and share. I have just scratched the surface... the sky’s the limit!”

instagram.com/sarahsnippets

As the climate crisis threatens their existence, an assertive new collective are using their leverage as a flashpoint in geopolitical tensions

Let’s face it, Australia has been an awfully bad neighbour in the Pacific for some while now.

Not a shouting-at-the-people-next-door, finger-pointing, vengeful kind of neighbour. Rather the sort that blithely parties all night, heedless of the family next door knocking insistently on the door at all hours, trying to make themselves heard over the loud music and laughter inside.

While scale of shortfall is uncertain, conservationists claim admission is proof the project isn’t working

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Gas giant Chevron has fallen even further behind on targets to capture and store CO2 at its mega gas project in Western Australian, but has refused to say by how much.

The company also confirmed on Friday it had bought and surrendered 5.23m tonnes of CO2 offsets to make up for the failure to meet its 2021 target at its CCS project at the offshore Gorgon gasfield in Western Australia.

Reports of record-breaking heat are made more alarming by the possibility of a prime minister who wants to weaken climate goals

There is no point denying that in the UK many people enjoy themselves when the weather is unusually warm, even as many others feel uncomfortable and in some cases unsafe, due both to the heat itself and what it signals about global heating. Spells of hot weather make sun-lovers feel they have been transplanted to the Mediterranean – where many of us take our holidays. Even now, record-breaking temperatures are still sometimes welcomed, rather than feared as a harbinger of more extreme dangers ahead.

That said, few will welcome the Met Office issuing its first ever “red warning” for exceptional heat on Monday and Tuesday – with unprecedented temperatures of 40C forecast in London and the Midlands, and as far north as Manchester and York. This represents a danger to life, with the risk of illness not limited to vulnerable people. The message is to keep hydrated and to find shade where possible. There are warnings of travel chaos and mobile phone blackouts. Not all parts of the UK are similarly affected; the top temperature in Aberdeen is forecast to be 21C. But there is a real prospect that the all-time high of 38.7C, set in Cambridge in 2019, could be broken.

Author recognised for his decades-long commitment to neglected environmental issues

The “elegant, urgent writing” of George Monbiot has seen the author, environmentalist and Guardian columnist win the prestigious Orwell prize for journalism.

The prize is awarded for commentary or reporting that comes closest to meeting the ambition of George Orwell, the novelist, essayist, journalist and critic, to “make political writing into an art”.

Band of volunteers now assist surveying homes so that re-roofing and scaffolding does not disrupt beloved birds’ nesting

When Chet Cunago heard that scaffolding was blocking swifts from entering their ancestral nests in the eaves of homes in Sheffield, she raced into action.

After frantic calls to the council, charities and fellow nature lovers, she got the scaffold boards removed and assembled a volunteer group to search for overlooked swift nests in all the council houses scheduled for renovation in Handsworth.

Erect a swift box, which costs £30–£100 depending on size. Local swift groups can help advise on installation or roofers and aerial installers can help. South-facing eaves are often too hot for the nests.

Site-faithful swifts are notoriously difficult to attract to new nest boxes but playing swift calls from an adjacent window can work. Swift Conservation sells automatic MP3 players with swift calls for £22. And even if the box isn’t adopted by swifts, it will certainly be used by other birds.

Drilling holes into plastic soffits and adding dividers inside is a cheap and unobtrusive way to make a modern house swift-friendly. Add swift bricks (£25) to any new extensions.

Join a local swift group and help survey nest sites – there will almost certainly be a swift group in your nearest city or town. When more swift nest sites are known about, they can be protected.

Join campaigns for swift bricks to be fitted in every new home. Alert developers, councils, housing associations and architects to the issue.

Grounded swifts can usually get airborne again, so if you find a grounded swift it may be immature (it can only fly if its wings are at least 16cm long) or ill. Put it in a warm box, give it water by running a wetted cotton bud around the edge of its beak, avoiding the nostrils, and call a local swift rescuer. A full list of swift rescuers can be found here.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including killer whales hunting a seal off Shetland and endangered mountain bongos in Kenya

US adviser to the White House and partner call on UN to move climate crisis summit over fears they would be targeted

A White House adviser and his partner have called on the United Nations to move a key climate change summit from Egypt due to the country’s treatment of LGBTQ people, citing fears that they and other activists would be targeted by security forces if they attend the talks.

The couple, Jerome Foster and Elijah Mckenzie-Jackson, have written to Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to condemn the choice of Egypt as host of the Cop27 talks due to its “LGBTQ+ torture, woman slaughter and civil rights suppression” and that the decision “places our life in danger in the process of advocating for the life of our planet”.

In July 2021, Germany experienced devastating floods. At least 184 people died and the damage was immense. Photographer Gideon Mendel’s Drowning World project documented the aftermath. A year later, Watermarks shows the damaged, alienated family photos of Gisela Pietsch-Marx, who lost practically everything