The Guardian

From Wally the walrus to dancing sea slugs it was a good year for spotting wildlife at sea, but the climate crisis and human activity are taking their toll

Humpback whales are becoming an increasingly common sight off the coast of Britain, according to a marine review of 2021, but dumped fishing gear is causing a rising number of stranded seals and dolphins.

Walruses, pufferfish and furrowed crabs were among the marine creatures from far-flung places that visited the UK and Ireland this year due to the climate crisis, according to the Wildlife Trusts, while puffins returned to the Isle of Man for the first time in 30 years after a rat eradication programme.

New products range from washing machine filters and balls to fabrics made from kelp and orange peel

From filters to bags to balls, the number of products aimed at stopping the torrent of microplastic fibres being flushed out of washing machines and into rivers and oceans is increasing rapidly.

Grundig recently became the first appliance manufacturer to integrate a microfibre filter into a washing machine, while a British company has developed a system that does away with disposable fibre-trapping filters.

Adam McKay’s end-of-the-world film is a ‘powerful’ depiction of society’s response to scientific warnings, campaigners say

Don’t Look Up, the latest celluloid offering from the writer-director Adam McKay, has become Netflix’s top film globally despite dividing critics and viewers.

The film, a satire in which two scientists played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence attempt to warn an indifferent world about a comet that threatens to destroy the planet, is an intentional allegory of the climate crisis.

‘Hell herons’, metallic beetles, tiny shrimp – scientists have been busy describing unusual creatures despite Covid restrictions

Six new dinosaurs, an Indian beetle named after Larry the cat, and dozens of crustaceans critical to the planet’s carbon cycle were among 552 new species identified by scientists at the Natural History Museum this year.

In 2021, researchers described previously unknown species across the tree of life, from a pair of giant carnivorous dinosaurs known as spinosaurs – nicknamed the “riverbank hunter” and “hell heron” – to five new snakes that include the Joseph’s racer, which was identified with the help of a 185-year-old painting.

Non-violent civil disobedience remains a vital tool for protest, but its form is shifting

If asked to name a news story linked to environmental protest in 2021, chances are that most British people would, depending on where they live, mention either the demonstrations alongside November’s climate conference in Glasgow, or (especially if they are in the London area) Insulate Britain. By blocking roads including the M25 on multiple occasions between September and November, the members of this new campaign group barged into the public’s consciousness – making some people angry in the process.

Last month, nine activists were sent to prison, where one of them, a scientist called Emma Smart, went on hunger strike for 26 days. Marches and rallies have been linked to protest since the middle ages. The Extinction Rebellion (XR) network, of which Insulate Britain is an offshoot, revived the tradition of getting arrested on purpose, a tactic employed by suffragettes. The idea is that by peacefully inundating the forces of law and order while attracting strong public support for a just cause, pressure can be put on the state to force change.

A film about a comet hurtling towards Earth and no one is doing anything about it? Sounds exactly like the climate crisis

The movie Don’t Look Up is satire. But speaking as a climate scientist doing everything I can to wake people up and avoid planetary destruction, it’s also the most accurate film about society’s terrifying non-response to climate breakdown I’ve seen.

The film, from director Adam McKay and writer David Sirota, tells the story of astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her PhD adviser, Dr Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), who discover a comet – a “planet killer” – that will impact the Earth in just over six months. The certainty of impact is 99.7%, as certain as just about anything in science.

Coastal communities in Mexico, Bangladesh and Somalia are struggling to adapt to the climate crisis. Many people have already lost livelihoods and homes to rising waters

India’s tiger corridor and Australia’s possum ‘tunnel of love’ are among the myriad infrastructure projects providing safe passage

• How creating wildlife crossings can help reindeer, bears – and even crabs
• Read more in our series Biodiversity: what happened next?

From a tiny railway bridge for dormice in the UK to elk, deer and bears benefitting from a slew of new animal crossings in Colorado, wildlife bridges are having a moment. As the human footprint on the planet continues to expand, a growing number of roads and railways include provisions for wildlife to pass through fragmented landscapes.

In January, we reported on Sweden’s plans to build a series of “renoducts” to help reindeer traverse the country’s main roads. The Swedish Transport Administration has since completed an ecoduct over the E6 in Skåne in southern Sweden, the third in the county. In southern California, work is due to begin on the largest wildlife bridge in the world in 2022, to connect isolated mountain lion populations north of Los Angeles that are becoming dangerously inbred. Joe Biden has earmarked $350m (£260m) of his $1.2tn infrastructure package for wildlife bridges to lessen the multibillion annual cost of collisions.

Nature Talks presents the results of the nature photographer of the year 2021 competition. Terje Kolaas from Norway was the overall winner in the results announced on 18 December

Despite the ‘minuscule’ chance of leopards roaming the wilderness, diehard enthusiasts insist ‘you’ve got to see it to believe it’

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Scott Lansbury had his first encounter 25 years ago. It was in the Victorian town of Upper Beaconsfield, close to midnight, where he and his brother saw the animal walking up the footpath across the road from where they lived.

“It was bigger than any dog I’ve ever seen,” he recalls. “Bigger than a labrador, bigger than a [German] shepherd.”

The climate emergency has clear themes with heroes and villains. Describing it this way is how to build a movement

The biggest success of the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign to push doubt about climate science is that it forced the conversation about the climate crisis to centre on science.

It’s not that we didn’t need scientific research into climate change, or that we don’t need plenty more of it. Or even that we don’t need to do a better job of explaining basic science to people, across the board (hello, Covid). But at this moment, “believe science” is too high a bar for something that demands urgent action. Believing science requires understanding it in the first place. In the US, the world’s second biggest carbon polluter, fewer than 40% of the population are college educated and in many states, schools in the public system don’t have climate science on the curriculum. So where should this belief – strong enough to push for large-scale social and behavioural change – be rooted exactly?

Amy Westervelt is a climate journalist and the founder and executive producer of the Critical Frequency podcast network

It wasn’t a financially astute move but it led to my TV series and helped me discover the truly important things in life

• Guardian writers and readers describe their favourite place in New Zealand’s wilderness and why it’s special to them

My entire experience of Auckland changed when I got a boat. It was the perfect antidote to a professional DJ lifestyle, where getting up at 5am to be on the water become immeasurably preferable to coming home at 5am from work. On trips out I began sticking my head underwater with such vigour that I somehow turned it into a whole new profession.

It didn’t happen straight away, of course. My 40-year-old, 14-foot beige fibreglass boat with a semi-reliable two-stroke engine, named Brown Thunder, only had so much range, and my real goal lay much farther offshore, tantalisingly out of reach. A place where tales of clear blue tropical water and huge fish swirled around a group of uninhabited islands, teasing me from the pages of marine magazines or the crusty lips of old salty sea-mates.

The climate crisis resembles a huge planetary lockdown, trapping humanity within an ever-deteriorating environment

There is a moment when a never-ending crisis turns into a way of life. This seems to be the case with the pandemic. If so, it’s wise to explore the permanent condition in which it has left us. One obvious lesson is that societies have to learn once again to live with pathogens, just as they learned to when microbes were first made visible by the discoveries of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.

These discoveries were concerned with only one aspect of microbial life. When you also consider the various sciences of the earth system, another aspect of viruses and bacteria comes to the fore. During the long geochemical history of the earth, microbes, together with fungi and plants, have been essential, and are still essential, to the very composition of the environment in which we humans live. The pandemic has shown us that we will never escape the invasive presence of these living beings, entangled as we are with them. They react to our actions; if they mutate, we have to mutate as well.

Bruno Latour is a philosopher and anthropologist, the author of After Lockdown: A Metamorphosis and the winner of the 2013 Holberg prize

Our photographers brought the natural world to the fore, with pictures of wildlife and the efforts to conserve them across the globe

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including galloping horses, a honey-bee hive and a lonely red-crowned crane

Exclusive: Releasing nutrients can spur phytoplankton growth, absorbing carbon dioxide in the process

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Scientists and engineers have pumped 300 litres of simulated whale poo into the ocean off Sydney as part of efforts to snag a share of Elon Musk’s US$100m prize for capturing and storing carbon.

The team, known as WhaleX, carried out its first open-ocean experiment on Sunday about eight kilometres off Port Botany in New South Wales after gaining clearance from the federal government.

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The Guardian and Observer’s 2021 charity appeal is fighting for climate justice. In this video, we meet some of those on the climate frontline, and the charities helping them. This year we are supporting four charities - Global Greengrants Fund UK, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Environmental Justice Foundation, and Practical Action - that fight to protect the rights and livelihoods of communities hit by extreme weather events caused by the climate emergency.

• Donate to our charity appeal here

Revellers in England and Ireland mark the shortest day of the year and official first day of winter

2021 was another extraordinary period for news and investigations, in the Guardian's 200th anniversary year. Twelve months of Covid stories ranged from the hope of vaccination through to government mismanagement. It was also the year of Cop26, with world leaders and activists gathering in an attempt to slow the climate crisis. 

There were protests against injustice, including those about violence against women in the UK. It was also a year of global political shifts, not least in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, it was a year of sporting inspiration in Euro 2020, the Olympics, and Emma Raducanu's improbable US Open victory. 

Here are some of the highlights of our journalism over that time.

• Show your support in our 200th year for the Guardian’s powerful, open, independent journalism in 2021 and the years ahead

Plan B Earth group argued ministers had not taken ‘practical and effective’ steps to reduce emissions

An environmental campaign group that challenged the lawfulness of the UK government’s climate policies has lost a high court fight.

Plan B Earth argued that ministers had not taken “practical and effective” steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It wanted Mr Justice Bourne to give activists the go-ahead for a judicial review but he refused to grant permission.