The Guardian

The expansion of drylands is leaving entire countries facing famine. It’s time to change the way we think about agriculture

• David R Montgomery is professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington, and author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations and Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life

This summer’s record-setting heatwaves and dramatic fires in southern Europe and the American west were stark reminders that the climate crisis has arrived. But as the world warms, there is also a quieter, lesser-known crisis unfolding underfoot. Desertification, long seen primarily as a threat to developing nations, is coming for Europe and North America too, as worsening droughts bake soils already degraded by conventional farming and grazing practices.

In Spain, for example, about a fifth of all land is now at high risk of desertification, as is much of the agricultural land across Italy, Greece, and western North America.

It’s media malpractice not to mention that burning fossil fuels drives extreme weather events like Hurricane Ida

The climate emergency is exploding in various parts of the world this week, but climate silence inexcusably continues to reign in much of the United States media.

Hurricane Ida has left more than a million people in Louisiana without running water, electricity, or air conditioning amid a heat index topping 100F. The Caldor fire destroyed hundreds of houses and forced mass evacuations around Lake Tahoe in California. Abroad, vast swaths of Siberia were ablaze while drought-parched Madagascar suffered what a United Nations official called the first famine caused entirely by climate change.

Seascapes is a series of photographs made by Paul Rousteau while artist-in-residence on a boat in Australia’s Coral Sea. Inspired by the beauty around him, Rousteau took to the darkroom to invent images of his own to bring out the barest constituent elements of the landscape

• Seascapes by Paul Rousteau is published by Loose Joints

A rare encounter was caught on video at Puerto Madryn, Argentina when a southern rIght whale seemingly plays with a woman on a paddleboard and pushes the board gently forward, observing its movement as it swims directly beneath it.

"They are rare moments, it is something that is prohibited," said Oscar Comes, a local water-sports tourism operator. "It isn't like you can go in a kayak, standup board, a boat, or whatever, to look for the animal."

Sometimes when I go to Bunnings there are sparrows inside there

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Technology and engineering academy tells government not to wait for a ‘miracle’ and aim for net zero emissions now

Australia’s leading scientists and engineers have told the Morrison government the technologies needed to make significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions already exist – and the Coalition should immediately implement a national net zero policy.

In an explicit response to the government’s “technology, not taxes” approach to reducing emissions, the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering has released a position statement calling on the government to “prioritise the immediate deployment of existing mature, low-carbon technologies which can make deep cuts to high-emitting sectors before 2030”.

Extinction Rebellion members march through Westminster and target offices of JP Morgan

An occupation of the offices of the environmental group WWF by a protest in solidarity with indigenous people in Africa has continued into its second day, as Extinction Rebellion’s actions continued in London on a smaller scale.

About a dozen activists organised under the banner WTF WWF occupied the WWF offices in Woking, Surrey, on Tuesday morning. They stayed overnight, refusing to leave until it begins a dialogue with indigenous communities in Tanzania, Kenya and Cameroon who say they are being displaced by conservation efforts.

Swiss scientists develop prototype ‘nanogenerator’ that produces renewable energy when trodden on

Scientists have developed technology that can turn footsteps into electricity.

By tapping into an unexpected energy source, wooden flooring, researchers from Switzerland have developed an energy-harvesting device that uses wood with a combination of a silicone coating and embedded nanocrystals to produce enough energy to power LED lightbulbs and small electronics.

Bird photographer of the year 2021 has been unveiled, with a photo of a roadrunner stopped in its tracks by the US-Mexico border wall taking the grand prize in this prestigious international competition

Iraqi minister and International Energy Agency chief urge countries to move away from fossil fuel dependency

• Without help for oil-producing countries, net zero by 2050 is a distant dream

The finance minister of Iraq, one of the founding members of the global oil cartel Opec, has made an unprecedented call to fellow oil producers to move away from fossil fuel dependency and into renewable energy, ahead of a key Opec meeting.

Ali Allawi, who is also the deputy prime minister of Iraq, has written in the Guardian to urge oil producers to pursue “an economic renewal focused on environmentally sound policies and technologies” that would include solar power and potentially nuclear reactors, and reduce their dependency on fossil fuel exports.

To meet climate targets and avoid economic collapse, countries such as Iraq need international support in the transition to clean energy

• Ali Allawi is deputy prime minister and finance minister of Iraq. Fatih Birol is executive director of the International Energy Agency

In the Middle East and north Africa, global warming is not a distant threat, but an already painful reality. Rising temperatures are exacerbating water shortages. In Iraq, temperatures are estimated to be rising as much as seven times faster than the global average. Countries in this region are not only uniquely affected by global temperature rises: their centrality to global oil and gas markets makes their economies particularly vulnerable to the transition away from fossil fuels and towards cleaner energy sources. It’s essential the voices of Iraq and similar countries are heard at the Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow this November.

To stand a chance of limiting the worst effects of climate change, the world needs to fundamentally change the way it produces and consumes energy, burning less coal, oil and natural gas. The International Energy Agency’s recent global roadmap to net zero by 2050 shows the world’s demand for oil will need to decline from more than 90m barrels a day to less than 25m by 2050. This would result in a 75% plunge in net revenues for oil-producing economies, many of which are dominated by a public sector that relies on oil exports and the revenues they produce.

With a record-breaking number of entries from around the world, the judges of the 57th wildlife photographer of the year have had the toughest job yet.

From lynx making a comeback to a striking ecological disaster and narwhal shrimp communicating at great depths, there is an incredible range in the unique and fascinating images in the Natural History Museum’s exhibition. The photographs are a compelling reminder of the importance of the variety and variability of life on Earth in securing the future of our planet, revealed just ahead of the first phase of the global UN conference of Cop15 on biodiversity.

A special selection of highly commended photographs has been released before the opening of the highly anticipated exhibition at the London museum on 15 October 2021

Awesome alpacas, frolicking flamingos and recuperating ravens … these rescue animals – in Sage Sohier’s photographs – have a zest for life and a remarkable willingness to forgive people

New infrastructure projects are all the rage, post-pandemic. But who benefits from a rising tide of concrete?

Dig for victory: this, repurposed from the second world war, could be the slogan of our times. All over the world, governments are using the pandemic and the environmental crisis to justify a new splurge of infrastructure spending. In the US, Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure framework “will make our economy more sustainable, resilient, and just”. In the UK, Boris Johnson’s build back better programme will “unite and level up the country”, under the banner of “green growth”. China’s belt and road project will bring the world together in hyper-connected harmony and prosperity.

Sure, we need some new infrastructure. If people are to drive less, we need new public transport links and safe cycling routes. We need better water treatment plants and recycling centres, new wind and solar plants, and the power lines required to connect them to the grid. But we can no more build our way out of the environmental crisis than we can consume our way out of it. Why? Because new building is subject to the eight golden rules of infrastructure procurement.

Global study calls for urgent action to prevent ecosystem collapse, with farming the biggest cause of die-off

Between a third and half of the world’s wild tree species are threatened with extinction, posing a risk of wider ecosystem collapse, the most comprehensive global stocktake to date warns.

Forest clearance for farming is by far the biggest cause of the die-off, according to the State of the World’s Trees report, which was released on Wednesday along with a call for urgent action to reverse the decline.

Wild cockatoos have been observed using three types of tools as 'cutlery' to extract seeds from tropical fruit. Researchers made the discovery while studying Goffin’s cockatoos on the Tanimbar Islands, a remote archipelago in Indonesia.

• Wild cockatoos observed using tools as ‘cutlery’ to extract seeds from tropical fruit
• Cockatoos in Sydney learning from each other to bin-dive for food, study finds
  
• Australian bird of the year 2021: nominate your favourite for the shortlist

Foundations For Tomorrow study gives insight into young people’s concerns for environment and government response

Young Australians overwhelmingly want to see immediate action on climate change but have little faith their leaders will do anything significant, a new survey suggests.

The survey from Foundations For Tomorrow, an initiative of the World Economic Forum and supported by AwareSuper, received 10,000 responses from Australians aged under 30.

Move on ninth day of latest protest campaign appears to mark change in use of force against the group

Police in London wielded batons and threw punches against Extinction Rebellion protesters as they battled to gain control of an open-top bus blocking London Bridge on Tuesday, in a step-change in their use of force against the group.

On the ninth day of XR’s latest protest campaign, the Guardian witnessed officers from the Metropolitan police climb the sides of the bus parked across the junction at the south of the bridge, striking and wrestling with protesters.

Today’s challenges demand radical action. The old orthodoxy of free markets and hands-off government won’t cut it

As western economies emerge from the pandemic, their governments face a choice: do they seek to address the profound problems that Covid exposed, or try to return to “business as usual” as quickly as possible? Their problem is that many of the issues exacerbated by the pandemic, such as wage stagnation, precarious work and rising inequality are not bugs in an otherwise well-functioning system, but inevitable outcomes of the way that western economies are now organised. So a business-as-usual approach simply won’t work. Much more fundamental change is needed.

The US government seems to recognise this. Joe Biden’s economic plans are a radical departure from the era that stretches from Reagan to Obama, when governments sought to keep taxes and public spending low and focused principally on globalised trade and the education and training of the workforce. Unlike his predecessors, Biden is pursuing large-scale public spending and taking advantage of ultra-low interest rates to borrow for infrastructure investment. His stimulus plans target the climate crisis while creating green jobs and expanding health, education and childcare – the “social infrastructure” that is essential to the economy but has often been ignored by mainstream economists.

Animal Rebellion activists demand that Arla become plant-based by 2025

Vegan environmental activists have blockaded a dairy distribution centre in Buckinghamshire, which they say handles a tenth of the milk supply in the UK, while a dozen other activists have sought to occupy the headquarters of WWF.

About 50 activists from Animal Rebellion, a sister group to Extinction Rebellion, blocked the gates to the Arla distribution centre near Aylesbury, locking on to bamboo structures and concrete barricades to stop lorries from gaining access.