The Guardian

Nearly a century after the extinction of the paradise parrot, a tiny team is trying to protect its cousin – by using land clearing

In 1922, Cyril Jerrard captured the first and only photographs of the paradise parrot, the only Australian bird to be officially declared extinct since European colonisation. Jerrard was well aware he was looking at one of the last of its kind: “The one undisguisable fact [is] that the advent of the white man has spelled destruction to one of the loveliest of the native birds of this country,” he wrote in 1924.

The last accepted sighting of a paradise parrot – also by Jerrard – was in 1927, near Gayndah in the Burnett River district of southern Queensland.

NSW is now the worst performing state for the first time in the pandemic, with nearly 210,000 jobs gone in just three weeks

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By all economic indicators the current lockdowns are nowhere near as damaging as those last year and yet that small comfort is small indeed, as this week millions of Australians are again put to the test.

Last week’s payroll job numbers showed a sharp drop in the first three weeks of July. Jobs fell 2.6% across the nation, with every state recording falls.

Alok Sharma’s air miles made the headlines, but missteps by his colleagues may be more damaging to the crucial talks in Glasgow

Alok Sharma stepped off the plane from Brazil on Friday, the latest stop in a punishing travel schedule that has taken him to 30 countries in seven months, and into the eye of a media storm.

“The height of hypocrisy,” screamed the Daily Mail’s headline, slamming the UK president-designate of the Cop26 UN climate talks, to be hosted in Glasgow in October and November. Sharma’s crime? No quarantines, having taken advantage of the rare exemptions offered to ministers, and 200,000 air miles in the pursuit of climate diplomacy.

Cop26 meeting is last chance, says Alok Sharma as he backs UK’s plan for new oil and gas fields

• Government censured for gaffe after gaffe in run-up to Cop26

The world will soon face “catastrophe” from climate breakdown if urgent action is not taken, the British president of vital UN climate talks has warned.

Alok Sharma, the UK minister in charge of the Cop26 talks to be held in Glasgow this November, told the Observer that the consequences of failure would be “catastrophic”: “I don’t think there’s any other word for it. You’re seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade the hottest decade on record.”

Thousands of people were forced to flee Thrakomakedones, a suburb of the Greek capital, after strong winds spread wildfires that burned down homes.

More than 50 wildfires are burning across Greece as the worst heatwave in more than 30 years has hit the country. 

Tens of thousands of acres of forestland, homes and buildings have been destroyed and the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has promised a radical shift in the country's approach to the climate emergency.

• Wildfires burn out of control in Greece and Turkey as thousands flee

Research shows more than a quarter of US population suffered ill health last summer, and it’s likely to get worse

The summer of 2020 brought fear of Covid-19, social distancing – and heat-related health problems that affects tens of millions of Americans.

Related: Last month was worst July for wildfires on record, say scientists

Soldier in his 20s, who was swimming in croc-infested waters, and friend who went to help, suffer serious injuries

A soldier has head, chest and arm injuries after being mauled by a crocodile that also attacked an army colleague who went to his aid in far north Queensland.

The men, who were reportedly swimming in croc-infested waters north of the Lockhart River on Friday afternoon when the attack occurred, have been airlifted to Cairns with serious injuries.

An ‘unholy pact’ and several politically fuelled decisions have UN advisers to Unesco concerned the committee is not acting to protect the world’s most special places

Along Thailand’s border with Myanmar, in rich forests filled with rare plants and animals, the indigenous Karen people are fighting for the right to live on their traditional land.

Last month, the UN’s human rights agency said the Karen continued to be forcibly evicted from the Kaeng Krachan forests. Thailand’s application to inscribe the forests as a world heritage site must be denied, the agency said.

FoI request shows BEIS employees and ministers took the flights after signing of net zero emissions target

Employees at the government department responsible for tackling climate change have taken 612 domestic flights since June 2019, when the UK signed the net zero emissions target into law, figures show.

Of the total flights taken – which are single journeys and do not include travel to Northern Ireland – by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), 34 of them were by government ministers.

The prime minister was asked about his plans for transitioning away from fossil fuels. He chose to distract, not answer

Allow me to let you in on a little secret. Many people working in politics and the media openly discuss the fact that Boris Johnson’s gaffes are entirely calculated. I once met someone who used to work for him and they told me that before he appears in the media, Johnson ruffles his hair to ensure he appears more dishevelled than he actually is.

This ruse has been useful to our prime minister throughout his political career. It has helped him to climb the greasy pole without facing any consequences for accusations of serial lying, allegations of bigotry or his involvement in the planned assault of a journalist. And it is what we must bear in mind when we consider his latest comments on the closure of British coal mines.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including baby pandas, common red soldier beetles and flight from wildfires

Agricultural runoff from farms and livestock operations creates oxygen-depleted areas inhospitable to animal and plant life

Scientists recently surveyed the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico around Louisiana and Texas and what they discovered was a larger-than-average area of oxygen-depleted water – a “dead zone” where nothing can live.

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists announced their findings this week: about 4m acres of habitat in the Gulf are unusable for fish and bottom-dwelling species. The researchers had estimated a smaller dead zone this year, predicting an average-sized area.

The prime minister’s core belief is that things will work out, and there’s no need for a plan B. We’ve seen how that works

First came the plague, then the flood, and now the fire. This has been a biblical summer, one where the doomsday warnings of climate scientists have felt increasingly close to the bone.

Horror stories of Chinese commuters drowning as underground train tunnels suddenly filled with water have merged uncomfortably in our imaginations with images of flash floods in east London, wildfires burning up the Turkish coast and a Canadian heatwave so fierce it cooked mussels in their shells on the beach.

Exclusive: IPCC says gas, produced by farming, shale gas and oil extraction, playing ever-greater role in overheating planet

Cutting carbon dioxide is not enough to solve the climate crisis – the world must act swiftly on another powerful greenhouse gas, methane, to halt the rise in global temperatures, experts have warned.

Leading climate scientists will give their starkest warning yet – that we are rushing to the brink of climate catastrophe – in a landmark report on Monday. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish its sixth assessment report, a comprehensive review of the world’s knowledge of the climate crisis and how human actions are altering the planet. It will show in detail how close the world is to irreversible change.

Satellite images confirm snow decrease spurred by climate crisis as glaciers recede and communities reliant on mountain water face shortages

The Andes mountain range is facing historically low snowfall this year during a decade-long drought that scientists link to global heating.

Scant rain and snowfall are leaving many of the majestic mountains between Ecuador and Argentina with patchy snow cover or no snow at all as dry, brown earth lies exposed.

Minister responsible for climate conference travelled mainly during winter and spring and did not isolate

The government minister responsible for this year’s UN climate change conference in Glasgow has flown to 30 countries in the past seven months, it has been reported.

Alok Sharma, who was appointed as president of Cop26 in January, has visited countries including Brazil, Indonesia and Kenya since February, according to the Daily Mail.

Hottest Games in history will put pressure on organisers to rethink sport in light of climate change

Olympic athletes and volunteers in Tokyo are being “tortured” by dangerous heat, meteorologists have warned, as the hottest Games in history puts pressure on organisers to rethink the future of sport in a climate-disrupted world.

Temperatures hit 34C in the Japanese capital on Thursday with humidity of nearly 70%. Athletes and sports scientists say this combination of heat and moisture has led to “brutal” conditions, which must be avoided at future events.

Homes still lack water and power three weeks after at least 187 people died

Three weeks after catastrophic floods in western Germany devastated communities and claimed at least 187 lives, those affected are calling on the government to increase its effort to salvage homes and businesses.

More than 20 people are still missing after the disaster, which came after heavy rainfall caused scores of rivers to burst their banks, and led to the loss of large numbers of houses, roads and bridges.

A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers say

Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points.

The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

Invoking climate change as the sole cause of terrible shortages lets those in authority off the hook

• Kaveh Madani is a former deputy vice-president of Iran

Iran’s water bankruptcy has been in the news lately, prompting deadly protests in Khuzestan province that also garnered the attention of global media. But this kind of problem is neither new or unique in the country. Drying rivers, vanishing lakes, shrinking wetlands, declining groundwater levels, land subsidence, sinkholes, desertification, soil erosion, dust storms, air, water and waste pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation and wildfires are among the other familiar signs of Iran’s environmental devastation.

Khuzestan, in south-west Iran, is known globally for its rich oil and gas resources. But this wealthy province’s contribution to Iran’s development is not just its oil and gas revenue. Khuzestan is also water-rich compared with most of the country. So, its large rivers have been blocked by gigantic dams to store water for agriculture, industrial and domestic uses and hydroelectricity production. Considerable amounts of water have been also transferred from its rivers’ tributaries to dry regions in central Iran.