The Guardian

Permits for coal-fired power plants drop by 83% despite leading world in construction as focus turns to renewables

Coal-fired power is still enjoying a construction boom in China, but a marked slowdown in the permitting of future plants has given experts hope that the world’s biggest emitter may be turning a corner.

China led the world in the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the first half of 2024, with work beginning on more than 41GW of new generation capacity, data published on Thursday showed.

Woodland Trust’s competition comes as charity campaigns for more robust legal protection for precious trees

An oak tree shaped like an elephant and the oak with the widest girth in the UK have been shortlisted for the annual Tree of the Year competition.

The Woodland Trust runs the annual competition to raise awareness of the UK’s ancient and at-risk trees.

Marton oak, Cheshire
Sessile oak (quercus petraea) / Approximate age: 1,200 years / Girth: 14.02 metres.

Bowthorpe oak, Lincolnshire
English oak (quercus robur) / Estimated age: 1000 years / Girth: 13.38 metres.

Zoo staff brought Magic to Sphen’s side to process the loss, and the penguin colony joined in his mournful call

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Sydney gentoo penguin Sphen, whose same-sex love story made him and partner Magic an equality symbol worldwide, has died.

The couple shot to fame in 2018 when news of their same-sex male relationship in a Sydney aquarium made global headlines.

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Sharing increasingly crowded spaces could result in greater risk of pandemics, human and animal conflicts and loss of nature, say researchers

Over the next 50 years, people will push further into wildlife habitats across more than half the land on Earth, scientists have found, threatening biodiversity and increasing the chance of future pandemics.

Humans have already transformed or occupied between 70% and 75% of the world’s land. Research published in Science Advances on Wednesday found the overlap between human and wildlife populations is expected to increase across 57% of the Earth’s land by 2070, driven by human population growth.

Beef, lamb and dairy products are the most carbon-intensive foods by far. More boldness around dietary changes is needed

The publication of a major study linking habitual eating of processed and red meat to a greater risk of type 2 diabetes is the latest very good reason to think hard about what we consume. Rising obesity rates, food poverty and concerns about the seemingly unstoppable rise of ultra-processed and junk food mean British eating habits are a longstanding source of widespread concern. Many people also recognise that there are environmental reasons to change their diets. Meat and dairy are the most carbon-intensive foods by far. Most of us should eat less of them. But the messaging around this continues to be poor.

Ever since red and processed meat was linked to an increased risk of cancer a decade ago, people have been advised to limit their daily consumption of these to a maximum of 70g. But while the “five a day” fruit and vegetables campaign turns 21 this year, and warnings about excess sugar abound, other government guidelines on food remain vague. While they specify two weekly portions of fish, one of which should be oily, about meat they say only “eat some”. There are no recommendations as to how much white meat should be consumed.

Extreme heat affecting nearly 23m people across US south-west and pushing Texas’s electrical grid to the limit

A heat dome covering the US’s south-west region is affecting nearly 23 million Americans, bringing with it some of the highest temperatures of the summer and putting pressure on the electrical grid in Texas.

The heat dome phenomenon occurs when strong, high pressure traps hot air over a region, preventing cool air from traveling in and causing temperatures to rise on the ground and stay high.

Marsh restorations allowing populations of fen raft spider, which can be up to 7cm long, to recover

One of the rarest and largest species of spider in the UK is said to be making a comeback on nature reserves.

After facing near extinction over the last century, the UK’s population of fen raft spiders is steadily increasing, and numbers are at a record high this year, according to the conservation charity RSPB.

Twenty-four brain samples collected in early 2024 measured on average about 0.5% plastic by weight

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that microplastics are accumulating in critical human organs, including the brain, leading researchers to call for more urgent actions to rein in plastic pollution.

Studies have detected tiny shards and specks of plastics in human lungs, placentas, reproductive organs, livers, kidneys, knee and elbow joints, blood vessels and bone marrow.

It is time to say this privatisation zealotry has been a disaster. March with us and let ministers know – enough is enough

You’ve been lied to, you’ve been misled, you’ve being extorted, you’ve been cheated, and you’ve been abused. For the last 35 years, you have been subject to nothing more than possibly the greatest organised ripoff perpetrated on the British people, and you have had little in return apart from greed, profiteering, financial engineering, political failure and regulatory incompetency. You’ve been had.

Thirty-five years after we were promised a utopian, market-driven vision of greatness, a future in which we would glory in the delights of an unlimited supply of clean water; in which our sewage would be quietly, efficiently collected, treated and disposed of, while our rivers, lakes and seas would teem with an abundant, diverse array of flora and fauna; and to top it all off we would have the cheapest water bills on earth.

Feargal Sharkey is a campaigner and former lead singer of the Undertones

These new proteins could be our best hope of averting catastrophe. But governments are trying to have them banned

For many years, certain car manufacturers sought to obstruct the transition to electric vehicles. It’s not hard to see why: when you have invested heavily in an existing technology, you want to extract every last drop before disinvesting. But devious as in some cases these efforts were, they seem almost innocent in comparison with the concerted programme by a legacy industry and its tame politicians to suppress a far more important switch: the essential transition away from livestock farming.

Animal farming ranks alongside fossil fuel production as one of the two most destructive industries on Earth. It’s not just the vast greenhouse gas emissions and the water and air pollution it causes. Even more important is the amount of land it requires. Land use is a crucial environmental metric, because every hectare we occupy is a hectare that cannot support wild ecosystems.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Conservationists say the number of hunting licences granted is too high and condemn it as ‘pure trophy hunting’

Sweden has issued licences to kill 20% of its brown bear population in the country’s annual bear hunt, which begins today, despite concerns from conservationists.

Officials have granted licences for just under 500 brown bears to be culled by hunters. That equates to about 20% of the total population, according to official figures, and would bring the number of bears in Sweden down to approximately 2,000 – a drop of almost 40% since 2008.

Go-ahead given for first stage of $30bn SunCable project, which minister says will be ‘transformational’ for Northern Territory

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The Australian government has given the green light to the first stages of what it describes as the country’s “biggest renewable energy project ever” – an ambitious proposal to send energy from a solar farm in the Northern Territory outback to Singapore via subsea cables.

The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the approval under conservation law of SunCable’s $30bn-plus Australia-Asia Power Link was a “massive step towards making Australia a renewable energy superpower” and that the project would be “economically and socially transformational” for the NT.

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England’s controversial eradication scheme may have caused higher rates of disease in surrounding areas, research shows

England’s controversial badger cull may have increased the risk of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) among herds in neighbouring areas, according to new research.

Researchers at the University of Oxford found that although badger culling reduced incidences of tuberculosis in the areas where it took place, in neighbouring areas the risk of the disease in cattle increased by almost a third.

John Boland and Chris Bryant use their garden to shade their house from Australia’s hot summers – and it helps feed them as well

As soon as John Boland moved into his house in inner-city Adelaide he got rid of the concrete and sheds and planted fruit trees. In the thirty years since, those trees have provided him with a third of his food and cooled his home so well that he doesn’t need air conditioning.

Deciduous trees on the western side of the house bathe the house in shade in the hot South Australian summer while letting in afternoon sun during winter. They also block hot breezes in summer and cold winds in winter.

Raising the wind speed at which turbines start spinning could prevent tens of thousands of bat deaths each year, researchers find

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Australian windfarm operators are being urged to embrace a simple measure used overseas that scientists say could dramatically reduce the number of bats killed by turbines.

Curtailment – lifting the wind speed at which turbines start spinning – is used in some European countries and parts of the US and Canada, but rarely in Australia. A global study published in the journal BioScience found it was an effective way to limit bat deaths.

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Appearance of dark crimson underwing causes excitement on land that would be bisected by road scheme

Beneath oak canopies, in an orchard full of hundred-year-old apple trees, excited exclamations rose from a group of moth enthusiasts last week.

The Cambridgeshire Moth Group had just trapped a dark crimson underwing, a species so rare that none of them had ever seen it before. Indeed, the colourful invertebrate is only usually ever found in the New Forest and is considered nationally scarce.

The opposition has still produced nothing to back up its widely disputed claim that Australia could have an operational nuclear industry before the 2040s

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Journalists are obsessed with the new. We cast around every day to tell audiences something they don’t know. That’s the job.

Sometimes, when we get it right, we reveal information that’s substantial and deserves exposure and scrutiny. Sometimes we aim for a different type of revelation – one that comes from picking apart and giving context to claims that are demonstrably not true, but have been repeated so often they have become a regurgitated part of public debate. This fact-checking role can feel repetitive and, frankly, exhausting. But it’s also part of the job.

Study finds ‘statistically significant association’ between exposure to fine particles in coalmine fire smoke and aging of lungs, equal to 4.7 years

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Retired secondary school teacher Howard Williams remembers watching “a gumtree literally explode from the heat”.

It was the beginning of the Hazelwood coalmine fire, which broke out on 9 February 2014 in the middle of a hot, dry summer.

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They threaten our drinking water and refuse to budge. But non-lethal methods are the only advisable ways to deal with the infestation

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There are eight pigeons living on my shed roof. That itself is a small victory: it has taken two years, 60 metres of anti-bird mesh, daily patrolling for and disposing of eggs and countless hours running around waving a rake to get them out of the shed. They nested in our hay, ruining the top row of bales. They pooed on everything. When we purchased this property, we inherited piles of guano half a foot deep. We haven’t yet relaxed enough to remove the drop cloths.

Now the pigeons are sitting on the eaves, clogging up the gutters (which also supply our drinking water) with poo, and pooing in the stock troughs. When my horse was hospitalised with gastroenteritis, I blamed the pigeons until my vet said that while they do carry salmonella (wonderful!), Mickey would likely be much sicker if he’d caught something from them.

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Gusts of up to 62mph made waters around islands unsafe; and Hurricane Ernesto passed over Bermuda

Hundreds of people were evacuated as flash flooding struck homes and holiday lets in the Balearic Islands last week, with many parts receiving about 100mm of rain within 24 hours.

Heavy downpours and severe thunderstorms hit the islands on Wednesday and Thursday, bringing hail and strong winds. The local authorities told people not to leave their homes on Wednesday, when the weather was at its worst. The town of Sóller, on Mallorca, received the highest 24-hour total of 114mm, but 68mm of this fell within just one hour, with 19mm falling in 10 minutes.