The Guardian

Traces of 122 different pesticides in 12 most polluted fruit and veg products, many with links to cancer

Almost all grapes and oranges contain a “cocktail of pesticides” according to research, which has singled out the most polluted fruit and vegetables in our shopping trolleys.

Each year, the government tests samples of groceries for chemicals to see if traces can be found in Britain’s food.

Australia should not be a climate laggard at Glasgow. We should be leading the world and encouraging every other country to increase their climate ambitions

As world leaders prepare to meet in Glasgow in November for international climate talks, the race is on to protect our planet and our way of life.

The UN’s international panel on climate change makes clear that we need to reduce our emissions to net zero by 2050.

Study finds the intelligent endangered alpine parrot can be trained to use electronic devices with their tongues

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The kea, an endangered New Zealand parrot, is clever enough to use touchscreens but don’t appear to be able to tell the difference between the real and virtual worlds, according to a new study.

Researchers taught six kea at the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch to operate touchscreens. The birds were presented with a series of tasks that were either entirely physical, entirely on-screen or a mixture of both.

High commissioner to Australia calls on PM to give ‘firm commitment’ to net zero emissions by 2050, saying ‘the time is now’ to raise targets

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The UK’s high commissioner to Australia has warned it will be “very disappointed” if Scott Morrison doesn’t attend climate talks in Glasgow, as pressure mounts to lift emissions reduction ambitions.

Vicki Treadell made the comments to ABC Radio National on Wednesday, warning that Australia risks being left behind if it doesn’t embrace a target of net zero emissions by 2050 and more ambitious interim targets at the Cop26 meeting to be attended by hundreds of world leaders.

He mustered us like a cattle dog, dive-bombed like a magpie, clamped his jaw around body parts and leered at us through windows. I felt like Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock’s The Birds

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He came to us in exchange for a case of beer. A white sulphur-crested cockatoo of indeterminate age but full of chutzpah. He had lived the childhoods of the neighbouring farm kids and now he would entertain us.

That neighbour really saw me coming.

Global analysis of indoor and outdoor pollution also finds link to low birth weight

Air pollution is likely to have been responsible for up to 6 million premature births and 3 million underweight babies worldwide every year, research shows.

The analysis, which combines the results of multiple scientific studies, is the first to calculate the total global burden of outdoor and indoor air pollution combined.

After a year-long Covid delay, the Nature Conservancy photo contest announces its winners – a showcase of Australian natural wonders

Campaigners voice dismay after rule permitting gas pipelines where energy is mixed with hydrogen

European lawmakers have voted to prolong subsidies for fossil fuel gas until 2027, opening a potential backdoor for pollution that campaigners said would be a disaster for the climate if it becomes law.

Members of the European parliament’s industry committee voted on Tuesday to allow the EU to continue subsidising natural gas pipelines until the end of 2027, as long as the energy is mixed with an unspecified amount of hydrogen.

The climate activist Greta Thunberg has taken world leaders to task about their promises to address the climate emergency. In a speech at the Youth4Climate summit, she asked for constructive dialogue and for the media to focus on what politicians do, rather than what they say they are going to do 

Our housing stock needs better insulation and low-carbon heating, or we’ll continue to suffer these shocks

Over the past few days the country has been thrown into panic, as soaring gas prices threaten to plunge hundreds of thousands more households into fuel poverty, joining the 2.5 million already there. For others, uncomfortably tight budgets will be further squeezed. Any country reliant on the worldwide gas market faces the risk of perennial price shocks. But let’s be clear: the extent of this crisis was not inevitable. It is, in significant part, the result of a decade of government failure to insulate us from the disastrous downsides of fossil-fuel dependency.

The UK is a difficult country to keep warm. It has some of the oldest and leakiest housing stock in western Europe, ensuring that heat dissipates through walls, windows and doors quickly after leaving radiators. Nine in 10 households rely on gas boilers, and lots of gas boilers need lots of gas: UK households consume more of it than almost all of their European peers, at around twice the EU average. In 2000, when North Sea gas accounted for 98% of overall supply, households were at little risk of price shocks. But as national production has tumbled by two-thirds in the two decades since, imports have risen from just 2% to 60% of supply to fill the gap.

Exclusive: Activist says there are many fine words but the science does not lie – CO2 emissions are still rising

Greta Thunberg has excoriated global leaders over their promises to address the climate emergency, dismissing them as “blah, blah, blah”.

She quoted statements by Boris Johnson: “This is not some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging”, and Narendra Modi: “Fighting climate change calls for innovation, cooperation and willpower” but said the science did not lie.

The victim, 60, reported to be in stable condition in Northern Territory hospital after being bitten by three- to four-metre-long crocodile

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A 60-year-old man is in hospital in the Northern Territory after being bitten on the arm by a crocodile during a cruise on the Adelaide River near Darwin.

St John Ambulance officials took a triple zero call after the incident on Monday and sent a crew to rendezvous with the victim and those helping him.

Thousands of outsourced workers on inferior pay and conditions to fulfil demand for cheap meat, Guardian investigation shows

Read more: ‘The whole system is rotten’: life inside Europe’s meat industry

Meat companies across Europe have been hiring thousands of workers through subcontractors, agencies and bogus co-operatives on inferior pay and conditions, a Guardian investigation has found.

Workers, officials and labour experts have described how Europe’s £190bn meat industry has become a global hotspot for outsourced labour, with a floating cohort of workers, many of whom are migrants, with some earning 40% to 50% less than directly employed staff in the same factories.

The Guardian has uncovered evidence of a two-tier employment system with workers subjected to sub-standard pay and conditions to fulfil the meat industry’s need for a replenishable source of low-paid, hyper-flexible workers.

An Adelaide firm’s plans for permanent facilities at Whaler’s Bay on the Eyre Peninsula could wipe out prime habitat, environment group warns

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Conservationists say a plan to build a permanent rocket launch facility at Whaler’s Bay in South Australia could push threatened bird species to extinction.

Southern Launch, an Adelaide-based startup, operates the Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex in a privately owned conservation area at the tip of the Eyre Peninsula.

NSW strategy paper recommends increased desalination, stormwater recycling and efficiency measures – but not drinking purified wastewater

Greater Sydney faces a 13% shortfall in its water supply within 20 years if the city continues to grow at its current rate while climate change makes rainfall less predictable.

A draft strategy on the city’s future water supply, released by the New South Wales government on Tuesday, says Sydney will need between 40 to 70 gigalitres extra within 20 years.

Sellers of plug-in vehicles say petrol shortages are driving people to adopt the new technology

As petrol stations in parts of the UK started running out of fuel on Friday, business at Martin Miller’s electric car dealership in Guildford, Surrey, started soaring.

After what ended up being his company EV Experts busiest day ever, interest does not appear to be dying down. This week the diary is booked up with test drives and the business is low on stock.

Ross-on-Wye residents say council would break climate commitments by approving drive-through

They were promised a life of peace and quiet in a new-build “garden village” on the edge of a pretty Herefordshire town with cycle routes, allotments and wildlife-friendly ponds giving the settlement an eco-friendly vibe.

But residents of St Mary’s Garden Village in Ross-on-Wye are up in arms after McDonald’s put in a planning application for a 24-hour drive-through within metres of their homes that they say could lead to almost 2,500 cars a day passing close to their front doors.

Group says it is ‘sick of over 8,000 people dying each year from the choice of heating or eating’

Insulate Britain protesters have caused disruption on the M25 for the sixth time in a fortnight.

Activists from the group formed a roadblock on the slip road at junction 14 near Heathrow on Monday morning.

Ahead of Cop26, the UK could take the lead in diverting investments away from carbon emitters

• Richard Curtis is a filmmaker and activist

Someone said something so simple yet so shocking to me recently: that weather used to be the last thing on the news, now it’s the first. Fire, floods, drought; it’s impossible to ignore. Well, I can’t help but feel that we should treat our pensions the same. They used to be the last thing on our minds – the worst possible thing to bring up at a party – but in order to tackle the climate crisis, they must now be the first.

With delegates from across the globe descending upon Glasgow in November for Cop26 – the most important climate negotiations for a generation – a new movement now has the power to deliver on the world’s most urgent agenda.

Democracy got us and the birds into this mess

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