The Guardian

Whether you are waiting at the bus stop or outside Lidl, the spring scent hangs heavy in the air. A walk in the park is like squelching through a bordello

Britain right now smells like sex. As you stand outside the post office, looking through your bag for a mask, you are bathed in the smell of fornication. As you take your aunt Elsie for a quick stroll to the hairdressers, the air drips with coitus. While lining up outside nursery to pick up your child, your nose is full of the smell of bonking. The sweet, vaguely piscine, sometimes acrid smell of shagging is hanging heavy everywhere – and we seem determined to ignore it.

At least, most of us. While poems are written about the nodding heads of daffodils, and Instagram stories are awash with swaying oceans of bluebells, most people seem rather less inclined to admit that – to paraphrase that famous Mitchell and Webb sketch – every park in England smells like semen. That walking your dog is, for a few weeks in May, the nasal equivalent of squelching through a bordello. It is quite an impressive act of dissociation to be standing beside, say, a hawthorn bush at the No 3 bus stop, as a sexually active adult, and not immediately turn to the person beside you to say, “Wow, this pavement really smells like fucking!” And yet we do. You might notice the odd quivering nostril, catch a conspiratorial smile, but you’re unlikely to meet a stranger who acknowledges that the air beyond their chin smells like nookie.

The news that almost all of us are breathing in unacceptable levels of pollution shows the government’s complacency

In these inflationary times when money is tight, are you preoccupied with rising – or dropping – house prices? First, take a deep breath. Or better still, don’t. Last week, we learned that almost every home in the UK suffers from air pollution above the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, according to the most detailed map of dirty air to date. Using the excellent addresspollution.org to check pollution levels at a click – produced by the Central Office of Public Interest (Copi), run by civic-minded creatives and makers of commercials – my house, or, rather, its position, minutes away from London’s south circular, has a percentile rating of 96 relative to other UK addresses, exceeding WHO guidelines by an alarming three times.

Those levels will be similar to those found in many areas in cities across the UK: the air that urbanites breathe can promote cancer, cause asthma, trigger bronchitis and kill. Living on fresh air begins to take on a wholly benevolent meaning.

Sydney to Melbourne in a petrol car would have cost over $150 but was just $12.74 in ‘short-range, second-hand EV’

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When Sharee McCammon and her partner set out for Sydney on a road trip the price of petrol in cities along the east coast had spiked to more than $2 a litre.

But the couple made the 2,751km journey from their home in Huonville, south of Hobart, for the total fuel cost of $43.38.

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Hundreds of mills could be converted to generate clean electricity – but the Environment Agency as just raised application fees by up to 790%

New hydropower schemes to help transform and preserve some of the country’s historic watermills face being wrecked by a huge increase in application fees, energy campaigners warn.

Some watermills have already had turbines installed to generate clean electricity, but campaigners say there are hundreds more across Britain which could be converted to hydropower to help conserve the sites and power the nation.

Protesters charged with causing criminal damage of more than £5,000, Surrey Police said

Four climate activists have been charged after protests at two motorway service stations in Surrey.

Nathan McGovern, 22, Amber Alexander, 18, Louis Hawkins, 22, and Rosa Sharkey, 22, have been charged with causing criminal damage of more than £5,000, Surrey police said.

From high-octane racing to airport queues, Elvis tributes and a hot air balloon gone astray, Guardian Australia looks back at the images of April

Attorney general has launched an inquiry into fossil fuel companies’ role in causing global environmental crisis

California’s attorney general has subpoenaed ExxonMobil as part of what he called a first-of-its-kind broader investigation into the petroleum industry for its alleged role in causing a global plastic pollution crisis, allegations that the company called meritless.

Attorney general Rob Bonta said on Thursday that the industry for decades has encouraged the development and use of petroleum-based plastic products while seeking to minimize public understanding that their widespread use harms the environment and public health.

New-York based Climate Emergency Fund donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to activists

Just Stop Oil’s disruptive protests, blamed for petrol shortages across parts of England, have been funded by US philanthropists who say they want to incite a global “spring uprising” over climate change.

The environmental activists, whose oil terminal blockades have enraged ministers and rightwing commentators, have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the New York-based Climate Emergency Fund (CEF).

Insect’s forest populations have halved over past half-century despite increased woodland habitat

Moths have declined faster in British woods over the last half-century than on farmland or in cities, despite woodlands having increased and moths being shielded from chemical and light pollution by the trees.

Forest populations of moths halved between 1968 and 2016 compared with average national losses of a third, according to a study.

Environmentalists accuse England and Wales water regulator of failing to take action against polluters

Environmental campaigners are threatening the water services regulation authority in England and Wales with legal action over its failure to take action to prevent untreated sewage discharges into rivers by water companies.

Lawyers for Wild Justice believe Ofwat has a duty under law to ensure sewage treatment plants avoid releasing polluting discharge into watercourses.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a giant panda, jumping fish and an osprey egg

The Whitley Fund for Nature will present seven grassroots wildlife conservationists with Whitley awards for their pioneering solutions to the biodiversity crisis.

The Whitley gold award, worth £100,000, will go to Dr Charudutt Mishra, the world expert on snow leopards, for his groundbreaking work over 25 years.

The other award winners will each receive £40,000 to accelerate their progress on the ground, which has reduced poaching, restored habitat and recovered populations of animals and plants essential for functional ecosystems

No Mow May scheme promotes letting wild plants thrive to provide nectar for insects

The number of people not mowing their lawns is increasing after a successful campaign to keep gardens wild, a leading nature charity says.

Gardeners are this year being urged once again by Plantlife to keep their lawnmower in the shed during No Mow May, in order to let wild plants thrive and provide nectar for insects.

Between 11 and 17 dolphins killed each year, government says, though independent observers put rate as high as 50 a year

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Bottlenose dolphins are being caught and killed in trawl nets in Western Australia’s north at unsustainable levels, a study warns.

The finding is based on analysis of the Pilbara trawl which supplies fish to the Perth market, targeting emperor, snapper, trevally, cod and grouper.

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New research warns pressures of rising heat and loss of oxygen reminiscent of ‘great dying’ that occurred about 250m years ago

Global heating is causing such a drastic change to the world’s oceans that it risks a mass extinction event of marine species that rivals anything that’s happened in the Earth’s history over tens of millions of years, new research has warned.

Accelerating climate change is causing a “profound” impact upon ocean ecosystems that is “driving extinction risk higher and marine biological richness lower than has been seen in Earth’s history for the past tens of millions of years”, according to the study.

Environmental activists say action is ‘significant escalation’ in campaign against fuel distribution in England

Environmental activists have sabotaged petrol pumps at two motorway service stations, in what they described as a “significant escalation” in their campaign against fossil fuel distribution in England.

About 35 supporters of the Just Stop Oil campaign staged blockades at the Cobham services in Surrey and the Clacket Lane services in Kent, both on the M25, smashing the display glass on petrol pumps with hammers and defacing them with spray paint.

Tropics lost 11.1m hectares of tree cover in 2021, including forest critical to limiting global heating and biodiversity loss, finds World Resources Institute

Pristine rainforests were once again destroyed at a relentless rate in 2021, according to new figures, prompting concerns governments will not meet a Cop26 deal to halt and reverse deforestation by the end of the decade.

From the Brazilian Amazon to the Congo basin, the tropics lost 11.1m hectares of tree cover last year, including 3.75m ha of primary forest critical to limiting global heating and biodiversity loss.

Scott Morrison is criticising the Coalition’s own climate policy – it’s just one that has barely been used

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Scott Morrison and other government MPs are accusing Labor of planning to introduce a “sneaky carbon tax” by – wait for it – using an existing Coalition policy as it was intended.

Sounds ridiculous, right? Election campaign shamelessness on steroids. But there is a lot going on here and it is worth stepping through it.

We have only to turn on the TV or look at social media to see the suffering climate change already causes

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For the last few months, children such as myself have only had to turn on our TVs to see images of people stranded on their roofs hoping to be rescued by the State Emergency Service. Opening the Instagram app reveals how the Great Barrier Reef has just suffered its sixth mass coral bleaching. And “once in a hundred year” floods seem to happen just a bit too often.

For some of us, it hits home on a personal level too.

Scott Morrison says Labor wants to use government safeguard mechanism as a ‘sneaky carbon tax’ but it is already making big business pay for offsets

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The Coalition last year required polluting businesses to buy 419,000 carbon credits at an estimated cost of $15m using a policy that Scott Morrison now falsely describes as “Labor’s sneaky carbon tax”.

Government data released last month shows that, under the Coalition’s so-called safeguard mechanism, major polluting companies had to buy 70% more carbon credits last financial year than in 2019-20.