The Guardian

Level for the most damaging tiny particles is halved, reflecting new evidence of deadly harm

The World Health Organization has cut its recommended limits for air pollution and urged nations to tackle dirty air and save millions of lives.

In the first update for 16 years, the guideline limit for the most damaging pollution – tiny particles from burning fossil fuels – has been halved. The new limit for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), mainly produced by diesel engines, is now 75% lower.

Government wins high court ruling to deter Insulate Britain’s motorway-blocking protests

Environmental activists blocking the M25 face possible imprisonment after National Highways was granted an injunction against their protests, the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said.

The campaign group Insulate Britain has shut down parts of the M25 five times in just over a week.

A team at the University of Oregon has begun a three-year study looking at the effects of air quality and other stress factors on dairy cattle

Juliana Ranches drove to work in eastern Oregon in early September through wildfire smoke so thick that, for a moment, she thought it was just a grey, foggy day and it would soon start to rain.

Ranches is a livestock researcher relatively new to living in the area, and the conditions were unlike anything she had experienced before, leading her to ask questions about the animals that spend their summers in the smoke. Eastern Oregon has this year experienced regular wildfires since early July.

“We know there is a negative effect,” Ranches said, referring to the cows grazing outside in some of the most polluted air in the US. The area registered 160 on the air quality index (AQI) in early September after reports of a large number of wildfires, a level that can put human health at risk.

“There is a little bit of work out of California with [dairy and beef] producers and indirect impacts, reporting lower conception rates and birthrates, but we cannot say for sure because there are no studies in a controlled environment looking into that.”

Research into the impact on livestock bred for human consumption is limited, although it is known that particulate matter from the smoke is a significant health threat, especially when exposure is long-term.

According to new preliminary research from the University of Idaho, a sample of dairy cattle exposed to poor air quality and heat stress produced less milk – about 1.3 litres less than normal (just over two UK pints) – a day than average. Some cows had not fully recovered two weeks after the air quality improved. But because this observation was based on just one herd, the data does not yet translate into solid recommendations for ranchers and farmers. The work must be scaled up to explore larger patterns.

It is why Ranches, along with her colleague Jenifer Cruickshank, who specialises in dairy management, has begun a three-year study to collect more data on cows and the effects of wildfire and smoke, as part of which they have put nearly 30 cows out to pasture.

“I call them my smoke cows,” said Cruickshank. During a wildfire event that results in an AQI measure over 50, she takes daily milk samples and blood tests, which will be analysed as stress markers. The cows’ respiratory rate and body temperatures are also documented.

“We’re getting a finer-grained picture of what these cows are experiencing, through poor air quality associated with wildfires – a better understanding of the physiological effects on them, like is it mild? Is it severe? Is there diversity among the response in the cows? With that information, we can start to look at the negative effects and minimise the damage,” she said.

England is one of the last strongholds of this beautiful insect but it is at risk due to excessive pesticide use

Organic farming is probably the best hope for the survival of one of Britain’s least known but valuable wild creatures, the necklace ground beetle, Carabus monilis.

Once widespread but now on the red list as endangered because of excessive pesticide use and changing farming practices, it needs help to survive. Since it eats many insects that feed on farm crops and the seeds of weeds that farmers want to control any help it gets to thrive will be richly rewarded.

Rest of G20 should follow Joe Biden’s lead on funding commitments, says climate envoy

Developing countries and campaigners welcomed the offer of increased climate finance from the US president, Joe Biden, at the UN on Tuesday, but warned that rich countries needed to do more to ensure the poorest received the assistance they need.

Biden, speaking to the UN general assembly in New York, said he would ask the US Congress to double to $11bn (£8m) a year by 2024 the financial assistance the US offers to developing countries to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather.

The ex-deputy PM tells Guardian Australia the next phase of climate policy must not ‘smash our regional economies’

• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

The former federal Nationals leader Michael McCormack says his party has to consider signing up to a commitment to net zero emissions because a flat “no” could threaten Australia’s trade relationships and export income.

McCormack’s public overture ahead of Cop26 in Glasgow comes as the New South Wales minister for energy and the environment, Matt Kean, will also tell an event organised by the British high commission on Wednesday that Scott Morrison has pulled off a “stunning coup” in negotiating a nuclear submarine deal with the US and the UK, but now needs to take the next step.

‘Avoided deforestation’ projects do not represent genuine abatement, say researchers who liken the Coalition policy to ‘cheap tricks and hot air’

• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

About 20% of carbon credits created under the federal Coalition’s main climate change policy do not represent real cuts in carbon dioxide and are essentially “junk”, new research suggests.

The report by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and the Australia Institute found “avoided deforestation” projects do not represent genuine abatement as in most cases the areas were never going to be cleared.

Since 2015 policies to insulate Britain’s homes and diversify our energy supply have stalled

• Ed Davey is leader of the Liberal Democrats and former energy and climate change secretary

Rocketing heating bills owing to dramatic gas price rises are just the latest chapter in Britain’s mounting cost of living crisis. From food price-hikes to increasing transport costs, this new bout of inflation is hitting essential goods – and that means the poorest people will be hit the hardest. So no one should be surprised that Boris Johnson has dismissed these problems. He wants us to think it’s all a global problem, with nothing unique to the UK. And he wants us to think it will all be over quickly.

Of course, the reality is somewhat different. While rising gas prices are a global phenomenon, British consumers will be hit hard because energy policy in the last six years has been an unmitigated disaster – with fewer homes being insulated and with measures for diversifying the UK away from overdependence on gas needlessly stalled. Within the last 18 months alone, the Conservatives have launched, mismanaged and then scrapped a Green Home Grant scheme; their flagship policy to help people cut their heating bills failed totally, and nothing has been put in its place.

Donation from $10bn Bezos Earth Fund will go towards biodiversity hotspots in Congo Basin and Andes

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has said he realised just how fragile the Earth was when he looked back down at it from space, while committing $1bn to conservation projects around the world.

The money , made through the $10bn Bezos Earth Fund that he formed last year, will go towards the conservation of nature in biodiversity hotspots such as the Congo Basin, the tropical Andes and the Pacific Ocean. It will help finance a goal to protect 30% of the world’s oceans and land by the end of the decade, a draft target in Paris-style UN agreement on nature being negotiated.

Outright denial has been replaced by something that may turn out to be even worse: delay

As he flew to New York yesterday to speak to the UN general assembly about the Cop26 climate conference, Boris Johnson was asked to defend old comments made by his newly appointed trade secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan. Trevelyan had made statements on Twitter in the past decade promoting climate-denial literature, denying climate change was happening at all, and denigrating climate scientists and activists as “doom-mongers” and “fanatics”.

Johnson insisted that these views – despite coming from a minister whose role has serious climate implications – weren’t really such a big deal. In fact, he was himself guilty of similar statements not so long ago. He reminded the public that were we to “excavate some of [his] articles from 20 years ago”, it wouldn’t be difficult to find sentiments that “weren’t entirely supportive of the current struggle”, as he generously put it. “Facts change,” he added, “and people change their minds.”

Green lawns are terrible for the environment. They’re also embarrassingly old-fashioned and out of style

Americans love front yards with big, carefully manicured lawns. In fact, homeowners spent a record $47.8bn in lawn and garden retail purchases in 2018 alone. Then there’s the water usage: 9tn gallons a year nationwide just on gardening. We consume this water even as parts of the American west are in the grip of a horrific drought that has paralyzed farmers, triggered huge wildfires, and has some states considering water cutbacks.

The reason we spend so much time, money and natural resources on our lawns, as Kristen Radtke recently noted in the Los Angeles Times, is that decades of television and popular culture have cemented in our brains a certain image of the American dream: house in the suburbs, white picket fence, two-car garage, glossy green lawn. The problem isn’t just that that image is difficult to attain for a lot of Americans. It’s that it’s embarrassingly dated.

In Germany, flying insects have declined by 76% in 26 years. In the UK, common butterfly populations have fallen by 46% since 1976. We should be alarmed by this insect apocalypse

Insects have been around for more than 400m years, their ancestors crawling from the oceans to colonise the land long before dinosaurs appeared. They have been enormously successful, evolving into a staggering diversity of more than 1m known species, with perhaps as many as another 4m yet to be described by science. There are more than 300,000 different types of beetle alone. I have been obsessed by insects for all of my life; they are amazing, are often beautiful, and lead fascinating, peculiar lives.

What’s more, the world would not function without these tiny creatures: they pollinate our plants; control pests; recycle all sorts of organic material from dung to corpses, tree trunks and leaves; keep the soil healthy; disperse seeds, and much more. They are a vital source of food for many larger creatures such as birds, bats, lizards, amphibians and fish.

Despite the summer’s floods, frontrunner Olaf Scholz’s ‘moderate’ climate message is holding out against the Greens

Forty years ago, Germans loved to make fun of eco-types who ate muesli, wore shapeless knitted sweaters and packed their groceries in jute bags. Back then, the German Green party was just getting started. Today, things are different: every supermarket has organic food, every fashion chain sells sustainable T-shirts in its stores, and the coronavirus crisis has accelerated the trend towards cycling to get around. The Green party itself has become a viable political force.

Related: The Guardian view on Angela Merkel: farewell to a bulwark of stability | Editorial

Low wages and poor working conditions – as well as unruly customers – combine to keep the food service labor shortage going

After the traumas of widespread economic shutdowns during the coronavirus pandemic, America’s restaurant industry is largely open for business again as eateries ranging from high-end bistros to fast-food chains are serving hungry customers.

But behind the full tables and busy kitchens is a story of a sector still in trouble amid the impact of the pandemic, marked by staff shortages, low wages and fears that safety protocols are still not enough to cope with a virus that is still a threat as the more contagious Delta variant spreads across the US.

Women’s Institute supports initiative, urging manufacturers to take action on plastic microfibres

Washing machines should be fitted with filters to prevent microplastic fibres from clothes reaching waterways and the sea, the Women’s Institute, campaigners and MPs have urged.

Filters are cheap and can catch almost all of the plastic microfibres produced from washing clothes made from artificial fabrics such as nylon, but there is no obligation in the UK for washing machines to be fitted with the simple devices.

Meat and dairy groups threaten to stop contributing to international summit on food sustainability after critical voices invited

Livestock groups have been lobbying the UN to support more meat and dairy production before a high-profile summit on food sustainability, documents reveal.

Most experts agree that livestock are responsible for at least 14% of global emissions, while a study published last week found the use of animals for meat causes twice the planet-heating gases that plant-based foods do.

The UN Food Systems Summit (UN FSS), taking place this week in New York, aims to make global agricultural systems more sustainable, billing itself as a transformational “people’s summit”.

But documents obtained by Greenpeace Unearthed – the investigative arm of environmental NGO Greenpeace – and seen by the Guardian, show livestock industry bodies threatening to withdraw if others in their discussion group at the summit do not share their “common goal”.

In the months leading up to the summit, discussion groups – known as clusters – worked to produce position papers offering sustainable food system solutions.

In one draft paper, dated 15 June, members of the “sustainable livestock” cluster stated that “advances in intensive livestock systems” mean they can “contribute to the preservation of planetary resources and effective delivery of nutrition”.

Environmental and other experts have advised however that lower levels of animal protein production and consumption are critical to reducing climate breakdown and protecting the environment.

PM’s warning to world’s richest countries comes amid suggestions US could commit more funds

Boris Johnson has warned the world’s rich countries that “history will judge”, if they fail to act now to tackle the climate crisis, as US climate envoy John Kerry suggested President Biden was poised to commit more funds to the fight.

At the UN general assembly in New York, the prime minister urged other developed countries to increase their contributions, to help meet the target of $100bn (£73bn) in climate financing set more than a decade ago.

Speaking to journalists in New York at the start of a three-day visit to the US, the UK prime minister urged developed countries to come forward with additional funding to help tackle the climate crisis. 'It is the developed world that for over 200 years has put the carbon [dioxide] in the atmosphere, so it really is up to us to help them,' he said.

The comments came as the UK finalised preparations for hosting the Cop26 summit in Glasgow in November

• Meeting Cop26 finance goals ‘going to be tough’, says Boris Johnson

Rising gas prices in a climate emergency is not the time for the rigid application of free-market principles

There is a level of government complacency about energy price shocks. Ministers think the best course of action is to just accept them. Wholesale gas prices are now more than five times their level two years ago, raising the prospect that household bills will rise by 12% next month. Shoppers could also face empty supermarket shelves as it becomes unprofitable to produce the dry ice and carbon dioxide needed to store meat products. If the energy crunch continues, industry warns, a 1970s-style three-day week might have to be introduced.

The government response has been familiar: deny the problem, deflect responsibility for failure and delay taking action. This strategy is a reminder of the importance of perceptions in a crisis. If something feels like a crisis, it is effectively a crisis. That is why perhaps Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, says there is “no question of the lights going out, of people being unable to heat their homes”. But what if people cannot afford the energy costs to heat and light their homes? About 85% of the UK’s domestic heating comes from natural gas. Fuel poverty is a real issue, especially when millions of workers are facing cuts to universal credit and a hike in national insurance. Price caps help poorer people afford necessities of life such as gas – but there’s no sign that ministers think the hardship merits more generous help.

From Western Australia to Norway, photographers around the world capture animals and plants in their natural environment – and under threat from human activity

• Deep impact: the underwater photographers bringing the ocean’s silent struggle to life