The Guardian

Citizen science survey should aid knowledge of populations, including that of small tortoiseshell ‘missing’ from buddleias

The apparent alarming absence of butterflies feeding on buddleia flowers this summer will be tested by the launch of the world’s largest insect survey.

People are being urged to take part in the Big Butterfly Count today to help discover if anecdotal reports of a lack of butterflies reflect a wider reality across Britain this summer.

The Environment Agency has tough words for polluting companies – but how has it let things get this bad?

Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the Environment Agency, wasn’t holding back. Fines for polluting water companies in England should be much greater, errant directors should go to jail in the worst cases and investors should not enjoy a “one way bet”. All are reasonable ideas. The current state of pollution in rivers is indeed “shocking”, “unacceptable” and all the other damning descriptions found in the EA’s annual environmental performance report on the water firms.

Serious pollution incidents increased to 62, the highest total since 2013. Seven of the nine privatised firms oversaw increases on 2020 in serious incidents. Only three companies – Northumbrian, Severn Trent and United Utilities – got a four out of four star rating.

A Pew survey found more Americans favor stricter environmental laws and regulations – even at an economic cost

More than 80% of Democrats think the government is not doing enough to tackle the climate crisis, according to a large nationwide survey that found younger voters across both parties are most frustrated with the pace of political action on green issues.

Overall, Americans are largely split along party lines in how they view Joe Biden’s record on pressing climate and environmental challenges like clean water and air quality, according to the Pew Research Center survey of more than 10,000 adults.

Climate change minister Chris Bowen has accepted the resignation of three members of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee

Labor will make substantial changes to a committee responsible for ensuring the integrity of the national carbon credit system after the departure of three members appointed by the Coalition, including the chair.

A spokesperson for the climate change minister, Chris Bowen, confirmed he had accepted the resignation of three members of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee.

Temperatures of over 40C cause red alert in the city and test records as heatwave ravages parts of Europe

China’s most populous city, Shanghai, has issued its highest alert for extreme heat for the third time this summer as sweltering temperatures repeatedly tested records this week.

The commercial and industrial hub of 25 million people declared a red alert on Thursday, warning of expected temperatures of at least 40C (104F) in the next 24 hours. Temperatures soared as high as 40.6 C in the afternoon but fell short of Wednesday’s 40.9 C, which matched a 2017 record.

Report shows English water and sewage firms’ performance on pollution has declined to worst in years

Water company bosses must be jailed for serious pollution, the Environment Agency (EA) has said, as it revealed English water firms have overseen shocking levels of pollution in the last year.

The agency said water firms’ performance on pollution had declined to the worst seen in years. It is calling for chief executives and board members to be jailed if they oversee serious, repeated pollution because they seemed undeterred by enforcement action and court fines for breaching environmental laws.

Britain’s first 40C day will happen sooner or later, but there is still time to stop such temperatures becoming regular events

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s feeling pretty hot in the UK. The Met Office has issued a rare, amber, extreme heat warning and we have a level 3 heat-health alert in place – just one level below a national emergency. Extreme heat is often referred to as a silent killer. Its impact is not as immediately obvious as after storms or floods, yet in the UK approximately 2,500 people died due to heat-related illness in 2020, a worrying figure as extreme heat becomes increasingly common. Earlier this year, the Met Office raised the threshold for what counts as a heatwave in some parts of the UK – and yet these events continue to happen with increasing frequency.

The problem isn’t isolated to the UK. Mainland Europe is experiencing its third major heatwave this year, with temperatures hitting a blistering 47C in parts of Spain. Many parts of Europe suffered an unusually dry spring, leading to widespread drought conditions, and increasing the chances of wildfires during periods of extreme heat – as Portugal is now experiencing.

For more than 10 years, Kenya’s great lakes have been flooding, displacing hundreds of thousands of people as rising water levels leave towns and villages almost completely submerged. Flooding is also affecting nature reserves and destroying important habitats for endangered species. Josh Toussaint-Strauss explores why the human and ecological disaster is happening – and why the Kenyan government is so slow to act

Campaigners hail step towards end of practice in French territorial waters that has had ‘devastating’ effect on local fishers

The European parliament has voted to ban “fly shooting” fishing in French territorial waters in the Channel, following reports that the technique, also known as demersal seining, was having a “devastating” effect on local fishers.

Campaigners described the result as a victory for small-scale fishers. Organisations representing coastal fishing communities on both sides of the Channel have warned that industrial trawling methods, including fly-shooting, are decimating their livelihoods and the marine ecosystem.

The River Wye flows through Herefordshire where bird numbers – and their waste – surged in the year after the supermarket signed a deal with a local processor, Guardian investigation shows

A major deal to supply chicken to Tesco from nearly a decade ago may be linked to the ecological demise of one of the UK’s favourite rivers, according to a Guardian investigation.

As the River Wye flows through mid-Wales to the Severn estuary, it passes through the so-called chicken capital of the UK, where an estimated 20 million birds are farmed in the river’s catchment.

From trade unions to a bishop, activists are uniting to keep the UK government to its North Sea climate commitments

When the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, tweeted on the eve of the long jubilee weekend that the government was giving the go-ahead to a new oil and gas project in the North Sea, ministers probably hoped the news would slip out without much fuss.

But less than 24 hours later hundreds of protesters, furious that the government was planning to expand fossil fuel infrastructure in the midst of a climate crisis, took to the streets across the UK to voice their objections.

The green gas nirvana touted by industry is hydrogen made using renewable energy and biomethane produced from organic waste – and it’s decades away

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An orange flame on your stove would be the signal that you were now burning “renewable gas”, the advertorial said, promising this would happen “sooner than you expect”.

Above the article, which ran in the Age last week, was an advert from pipeline and distribution company Australian Gas Networks (AGN) showing a gas flame burning an unfamiliar green with the words “renewable gas”.

RePlanet calls on EU to ditch organic targets and for governments to lift bans on genetically modified crops

Governments should put a moratorium on the use of biofuels and lift bans on genetic modification of crops, a green campaigning group has urged, in the face of a growing global food crisis that threatens to engulf developing nations.

Ending the EU’s requirement for biofuels alone would free up about a fifth of the potential wheat exports from Ukraine, and even more of its maize exports, enough to make a noticeable difference to stretched food supplies, according to analysis by the campaign group RePlanet.

Groups representing Unilever and Amazon say long-term targets will boost investment and provide jobs

Business groups representing Amazon, Coca-Cola, Unilever and Lloyds Banking Group have all called on Conservative leadership contenders to protect the net zero target for the good of the economy.

There have been fears that the leadership election could cause the UK’s climate commitments to be ditched, as at least two contenders have said they would pause the emissions targets.

After an outcry at last year’s killing of 1,480 white-sided dolphins, campaigners say new government hunt quotas are ‘farcical’

Months after the much-criticised slaughter of more than 1,400 white-sided dolphins in the Faroe Islands, a provisional annual hunt quota of 500 has been set by the Faroese government in what campaigners call a “farcical” decision.

The Faroese fisheries minister, Árni Skaale, said that the quota was meant to secure sustainability. “We have a right to hunt,” he told the Guardian, but added that there was an obligation to protect the country’s resources: “We have to utilise everything sustainably.”

Eleven nations least responsible for global heating must spend up to 22% of GDP on dealing with effects of it

African countries that are the least responsible for the climate crisis will have to spend up to five times more on adapting to global heating than they do on healthcare.

Analysis of 11 nations with a total population of more than 350 million lays bare the huge financial toll of taking action to avert the severe environmental consequences of global heating.

‘Visitors vote and other species don’t,’ says researcher, who found park managers are being pressured to prioritise infrastructure

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Managers of cash-strapped national parks have put spending on visitor facilities ahead of managing the environment, a Queensland study has found.

Researchers from James Cook University spent years interviewing managers from 41 protected areas around the state and say all are suffering the effects of inadequate, shrinking budgets.

Our federal government pays some people to protect native forests, while state governments pay others to cut them down

The climate crisis often gets blamed on market failure, but government failure plays a pretty big role as well. Not only do Australian governments spend more than $11.6bn a year subsidising fossil fuels, at the same time the federal government spends billions paying some landholders to grow more trees, state governments perversely continue to subsidise the logging of native forests. I’m not sure that’s what people mean by the circular economy.

While successive governments have spent billions subsidising research into carbon capture and storage (CCS), the really inconvenient truth is the most effective CCS technology is the humble tree. It’s low cost, low risk and ready to roll. Trees quite literally suck carbon dioxide out of the air and store it safely in their trunks and their roots. And as if that’s not a cool invention, trees throw in water filtration and native species habitat “services” for free. If Elon Musk had invented the tree, he’d be a trillionaire by now.

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A lack of recent rainfall forces part of the Leeds-Liverpool canal to shut while 5 million face a hosepipe ban

Boat owners on the UK’s longest canal will not be able to move their boats next week, due to a water shortage, while 5 million people have been warned they may be soon facing a hosepipe ban.

Stretches of the Leeds-Liverpool canal will be closed during periods next week after a lack of rainfall has led to low levels in some Yorkshire and Lancashire reservoirs, leaving canal locks unable to be filled.

The WHO declared it a probable human carcinogen in 2015 and 70-80 UK councils have turned to chemical-free options

Yellow grass and unnaturally bare soil around public trees and paths is increasingly a vision of the past, as indiscriminate use of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate is phased out by councils. But changing the way the public realm looks is not without controversy, with some complaining so-called weeds make urban spaces unsightly.

Heavily used in farming, glyphosate’s non-agricultural use extends to parks and green spaces, pavements and playgrounds, hospitals and shopping centres. Since the WHO declared it a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015, after research found “strong” evidence for its toxicity, 70 to 80 UK councils have turned to chemical-free options or simply letting plants grow, from Bath & North East Somerset council, to Highland council in Scotland.