The Guardian

‘Deception’ gives false impression firms are addressing climate crisis, says Emma Howard Boyd

Widespread greenwashing by businesses is compromising efforts to prepare for climate impacts such as floods and heatwaves, the chair of the Environment Agency will say in a speech on Monday.

Emma Howard Boyd, addressing the UK Centre for Greening Finance and Investment Annual Forum, will warn businesses are embedding liability and storing up risk for their investors by giving the false impression they are addressing the climate crisis.

The new species is also the largest giant waterlily on the planet, with leaves growing up to three metres in the wild

A giant waterlily grown at Kew Gardens has been named as new to science, in the first discovery of its type in more than a century.

Scientists at the south-west London garden suspected for decades there could be a third species of giant waterlily and worked with researchers in its native home in Bolivia to see if their thesis was correct.

Boom clouded by supply chain disruption, a fragmented industry as well as ethical issues

“It’s hot,” says Steve Springett, a director of the renewable energy brand Egg, cheerily assessing the solar market. “There’s two key factors: people are understanding the environmental benefits of it better, and energy is really, really expensive at the moment.”

Consumer interest has increased in recent months as Britons hunt for ways to cut huge energy bills. A reduction in VAT on energy efficient systems from 5% to nothing this spring has added to the appeal of solar power.

Party makes promise amid reports UK is falling behind European rivals in production capacity for EVs

Labour has pledged to create at least 30,000 jobs by promising to build three gigafactories for electric car battery production in Britain by 2025, as it warned the country was falling behind its European competitors in the race to ditch petrol power.

Amid recent reports that Britain faces a battle to hold on to the production of electric vehicles (EVs) made by manufacturers already in the UK, the party has committed itself to a major expansion of the part-financing of gigafactories. It follows research suggesting countries such as Germany, which already has a huge car industry, are significantly ahead in establishing the plants.

In the depths of a Melbourne winter, when it’s 4.6C on the bank and 6C in the Yarra, the true believers gather

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email and listen to our podcast

I asked my friend if she wanted to come swimming in the Yarra/Birrarung – near the city – as dawn broke last week.

“It’s safe, they test!” I said. She paused, and for a second I thought she would join me in this foolhardiness. Then she replied: “That’s like saying drinking your own piss is safe.”

A new book showcases spectacular photos of frogs, crocodiles, tuataras, turtles, lizards and snakes of Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email and listen to our podcast
  

One of the few positives from lockdown is the number of city dwellers who connected with urban wildlife during the long days at home. New York-based music supervisor Randall Poster is one of them. He loved listening to birdsong in the quiet city so much that he decided to highlight the birds’ plight as their habitats vanish. With producer Rebecca Reagan, he created For the Birds, a multidisciplinary initiative that includes The Birdsong Project, a 20-LP box set of music and poems to enjoy. If you head to Brooklyn Botanic Garden between now and October, there’s also an installation of 33 artist-built birdhouses. Some are species specific, such as Jessica Maffia’s A Home for Flickers and Nina Cooke John’s Oh Robin!, but all reflect the complex, fragile, migratory lives of the birds. “We hope that visitors will feel the joy of creativity and the inspiration of birds and birdsong,” says Poster.

A man in a hammock is determined to stop Haringey council felling the 120-year-old plane in a row over subsidence

On Wednesday evening, as the light was fading, I stood chatting under a London plane tree to Marcus Carambola, who was about to spend his 50th consecutive night sleeping in a hammock among the tree’s branches, 10m above the pavement. Carambola, barefoot, 33, spoke of the tree as an old friend: “We have got to know each other pretty well,” he said, looking up.

The 120-year-old tree, in Oakfield Road, in Haringey, north London, has become the emblem of a battle between residents, insurers and the local council that has implications for leafy streets across the country.

Exclusive: António Guterres says growing north and south divide is ‘morally unacceptable’ and dangerous

Humanity is facing a “perfect storm” of crises that is widening inequality between the north and south, the UN secretary general has warned. The divide is not only “morally unacceptable” but dangerous, further threatening peace and security in a conflicted world.

The global food, energy and financial crises unleashed by the war in Ukraine have hit countries already reeling from the pandemic and the climate crisis, reversing what had been a growing convergence between developed and developing countries, António Guterres said.

AspiraDAC device can remove two tonnes of CO2 a year and store it underground using direct air capture technology

• Get our free news app, morning email briefing and daily news podcast

A solar-powered and tent-sized Australian prototype machine that can suck CO2 from the air has secured a $700,000 contract to capture and store carbon.

The deal, part of a project backed by corporates including the owners of Google and Facebook, is thought to be the first time an Australian company has secured a deal to remove CO2 using direct air capture (DAC) technology.

Supporters of group say young people have ‘nothing to lose any more’ as they call for end to new oil and gas projects

Two young supporters of Just Stop Oil have glued themselves tothe frame of a JMW Turner painting at Manchester Art Gallery.

It is the third time this week that supporters of the group, which is calling for a government-imposed moratorium on new oil and gas extraction projects, have glued themselves to major works in UK galleries.

The climate agenda risks being derailed by energy market disruptions caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine

Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia this month highlights the paradox of American power. The US has the economic heft to punish an opponent – but not enough to alter the behaviour of a determined adversary. Sanctions will see Russia’s economy contract by 9% next year. But Washington needs more nations to join its camp to halt Moscow’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Mr Biden has been forced to prioritise war objectives over ethics in meeting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA says ordered the barbaric murder of the prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The havoc that Russia’s war has caused on the world’s energy markets is contributing to an economic crisis that is playing into the hands of Mr Biden’s domestic opponents. This highlights the west’s failure to confront the climate emergency with a less carbon-intensive economic model. The green agenda risks being derailed by sky-high hydrocarbon prices. This scenario could have been averted if western nations had accelerated their net zero agendas by driving down energy demand – the lack of UK home insulation is one glaring failure – and spending on renewables to achieve energy security. Instead, this week the G7 watered down pledges to halt fossil fuel investment over fears of winter energy shortages as Moscow squeezes supplies.

Conservation group wants to ‘drive cultural shift’ to designate trees and woodlands ‘as fundamental to quality of life’

She would never have dreamed of it a few years ago, but when lockdown came and she found herself separated from family and friends, “I’m not ashamed to say I hugged a tree or two if I was feeling sad,” says Jane Barber. “When you couldn’t hug people – and I didn’t have a partner at the time – it was really challenging for people who lived alone.

“We need connection, to feel connection with another living being. To connect with the tree’s history and reflect on what it might have witnessed is wonderful.”

Small populations of wild rock doves discovered in places including Outer Hebrides

Colonies of extremely rare and endangered birds that are the wild ancestors of domestic and feral pigeons have been found on secluded Scottish islands.

Researchers have spoken of their excitement and surprise at discovering small populations of wild rock doves in places that include the Outer Hebrides.

An Italian town has banned the practice during a heatwave, but if done right it benefits hair and scalp

Global consumption of water is growing twice as fast as the world’s population and droughts are affecting swathes of the planet. So it was no surprise that this week the mayor of an Italian town in Emilia-Romagna, which is experiencing a severe heatwave, banned hairdressers from shampooing their customers’ hair twice, saying it would save thousands of litres of water a day.

As we all attempt to reduce waste, that additional shampoo at home or in the salon can seem like overkill. So is what is known in the trade as “double cleansing” really necessary? No, but every hairdresser and trichologist is seemingly in agreement that the second shampoo has distinct benefits to scalp and hair, regardless of skin and hair type.

Woman, who has non-life-threatening injuries, treated in Wyoming hospital after encounter in national park

A 71-year-old Pennsylvania woman was gored by a bison on Wednesday in Yellowstone National Park, in “the third reported bison and visitor incident” this year, officials said.

The woman, who suffered non-life-threatening injuries, was transported to a hospital in Cody, Wyoming.

French president, speaking on sidelines of UN ocean conference in Lisbon, urges more investment in science to protect high seas

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has called for a legal framework to stop deep-sea mining from going ahead and urged countries to put their money into science to better understand and protect the world’s oceans.

There is growing international interest in deep-sea mining but there is also pressure from some environmental groups and governments to either ban it or ensure it only goes ahead if appropriate regulations are in place.

In a major environmental case, the court has made clear that it would rather represent the interests of corporations and the super-rich than the needs and desires of the vast majority of Americans – or people on Earth

In remarks to the first Earth Day gathering in 1970, the Maine senator Edmund Muskie made the case for the Clean Air Act – a bill he helped draft – in stark terms. “There is no space command center, ready to give us precise instruction and alternate solutions for survival on our spaceship Earth,” he told the crowd. “Our nation – and our world – hang together by tenuous bonds which are strained as they have never been strained before – and as they must never be strained again. We cannot survive an undeclared war on our future.”

In its Thursday ruling on West Virginia v EPA – in line with a string of decisions that will make life here more dangerous – the US supreme court all but declared that war, curtailing the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plants under a provision of the Clean Air Act and – more worryingly – striking an opening blow to the government’s ability to do its job.

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a stonefish, a mountain jerboa and a bevy of otters

But can’t we just all be varroa mates?

• Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published
• Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints