The Guardian

Near flooding of Henley-on-Thames building prompts decision to tell the story of climate crisis

From the reconstructed riverside of The Wind in the Willows to an historic Georgian rowboat used in the inaugural Oxford-Cambridge race, the exhibits at the River and Rowing Museum celebrate the importance of British rivers.

But the award-winning building in Henley-on-Thames – designed by the modernist architect David Chipperfield – is facing a significant threat from the very river beside which it resides.

The country’s 13 million dogs create a lot of mess that’s hard to dispose of, dangerous and harmful to the environment

An unlikely folk hero has emerged in the Venice beach area of Los Angeles. Their identity is unknown, but their popularity is down to their homemade flags on cocktail sticks stuck into piles of dog faeces with messages like “Lazy. Pick. Up. Your. Dog. Poo”. The message is going down well. “I’m a big fan,” said one local. “No one wants to see a dog poop everywhere.”

These are the exact tactics that were used in Britain back in the 1980s, when dog faeces on the streets first began to be seen as unacceptable. Campaigners stuck little flags with similar messages aimed at getting dog poo off streets and public play areas. In many ways it was a successful campaign. There’s now widespread consciousness of the dangers to children of toxocara disease caused by accidentally ingesting excrement via their hands. And there are very few who would put up a public defence that a faeces-littered pavement is a sign of the healthy freedom of its citizens.

London minister Greg Hands embroiled in congestion and pollution debate with constituents over scheme in election battleground

When the Tory minister Greg Hands criticised a trial scheme in his constituency to block the use of residential roads as rat runs, he might have expected to win some votes and boost his party’s pro-car agenda.

Instead, he finds himself embroiled in a charged and divisive debate in his Chelsea and Fulham constituency, with a backlash from some Tories who back measures to curb traffic and introduce clean-air neighbourhoods.

Froglets from species classed as near-threatened arrive for the second time at Cotswolds wildlife park

A frog species that is in a “perilous state” due to an infectious disease has been successfully bred at a wildlife park in Oxfordshire.

Keepers at the Cotswold wildlife park in Burford have again bred the near-threatened cinnamon frog, four years after it became only the second zoological collection in Europe to breed the species.

‘Tricky’ Nicholls has pulled decades’ worth of Sydney’s rubbish out of the sea by hand – but he still has hope for our oceans

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Every morning a tractor rolls over Manly’s picture-perfect beaches, scraping away the signs of the day before. But below the water’s pristine surface, where council clean-up teams struggle to scour, a jumble of plastics tell a different tale.

It is a story Richard Nicholls knows well. Over three decades, the 63-year-old “Tricky” Nicholls has led thousands of divers and snorkelers on monthly clean-up dives while tracking trends in Sydney’s marine plastics.

Charity blames the decline of invertebrates on farming, sewage and run-off from roads and homes, months after the Environment Agency told them the water in Wiltshire river was clean

A citizen science programme has revealed the decline of one of the country’s most significant chalk streams after claims by Environment Agency officials that it had not deteriorated. The SmartRivers programme run by the charity WildFish, which surveys freshwater invertebrates, reported “strong declines in relation to chemical pressure” on the River Avon in Wiltshire. It said its data indicated a decline in the condition of the river over the last five years.

The charity compiled a report on its findings after the conservation groups say they were told at a meeting by the Environment Agency in August that “the Avon has not deteriorated in water quality in the last five years”. David Holroyd, head of water quality for Wiltshire Fishery Association, said the numbers of invertebrates collected in spring and autumn samples from 2019 and 2023 at 11 sites on the upper Avon had shown a decline.

Researchers say toxic chemicals pose a pollution risk as oil and gas companies are allowed to leave pipelines to rot

Decaying oil and gas pipelines left to fall apart in the North Sea could release large volumes of poisons such as mercury, radioactive lead and polonium-210, notorious for its part in the poisoning of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, scientists are warning.

Mercury, an extremely toxic element, occurs naturally in oil and gas. It sticks to the inside of pipelines and builds up over time, being released into the sea when the pipeline corrodes.

Hunted for years in NSW’s Pilliga, Rambo has now disappeared. In his place is an explosion of native species. But why will no one call Rambo ‘dead’?

There is a baby boom of critically endangered native species happening in north-west New South Wales. For the first time in more than a century, the Pilliga scrub – the largest native forest west of the Great Dividing Range – is crawling with multiple generations of greater bilbies, bridled nailtail wallabies, brush-tailed bettong, plains mice and Shark Bay bandicoots.

“All the animals are thriving and most of the females are breeding,” says the Australian Wildlife Conservancy ecologist Vicki Stokes, who monitors the colony’s progress via camera traps and transmitters attached to their tails. “And because the bandicoots have a gestation of just 18 days and the plains mice around 30, it’s happening fast. Some of them are on their third or fourth litters already.”

Flooding is now so frequent that the water course shifts endlessly. In northern NSW, flood-PTSD is rife

This summer, despite a shift to El Niño, my region – northern New South Wales – has been plagued by flood warnings. We are, of course, thankful it is not fire. Flooding here, especially in the warmer months, is normal, though nothing feels normal after the “one-in-one-hundred-year” flood in 2017 that swept away a cabin on my property, or the “one-in-one-thousand-year” flood in 2022 that submerged many of our low-lying townships and reduced much of our highlands, through landslips, to rubble.

Since then, the warning system app Hazards Near Me has been updated, and my phone now pings with flood warnings. It is hard to assess how seriously to take these pings when they are so frequent. If there is a flood warning, and it gets late, should I try to sleep or should I pace about in the pouring rain with a torch attempting to gauge the danger?

Researchers hope the findings will inform policymakers planning cities for a warming world

Few things are as soothing on a hot summer’s day as a walk through a beautiful botanical garden, but they are not just oases of calm. As climate breakdown fuels soaring temperatures, they could prove crucial in moderating the heat in the streets around them.

A comprehensive review of research into the heat-mitigating effects of green spaces during heatwaves has found that botanical gardens are the most effective. It is a finding the team at the Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCCAR) hope will inform policymakers planning cities for a warming world.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

The environment minister Susana Muhamad says nature is a ‘pillar’ of fighting the climate crisis

The next round of global biodiversity negotiations will put nature at the heart of the international environment agenda, Colombia’s environment minister has said, as the country prepares for the Cop16 summit.

Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who is expected to be the Cop16 president, said the South American country would use the summit to ensure nature was a key part of the global environmental agenda in the year building up to the climate Cop30 in the Brazilian Amazon in 2025, where countries will present new plans on how they will meet the Paris agreement.

Dismissal of concept already recognised in UN declarations described as shameful, contradictory and undemocratic

The UK government can never accept that nature or Mother Earth has rights, a British government official from the environment department has told the UN.

The dismissal of a concept that has already been recognised in UN declarations and is a fundamental belief of many Indigenous communities was described by critics as shameful, contradictory and undemocratic.

Scientists are investigating reports of dying coral from Lizard Island in the north to Heron Island in the south

Scientists are reporting corals are bleaching white and dying from rising ocean temperatures across a more than 1,000km stretch of the Great Barrier Reef.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science were preparing on Thursday to carry out surveys from a helicopter across the southern section of the reef.

Proposal focuses on technique that fills atmosphere with particles, reflecting part of sun’s heat and light back into space

Switzerland has initiated a global debate on whether the “risks, benefits and uncertainties” of dimming the sun should be studied by a United Nations expert group.

It is proposing that the world body should gather information about ongoing research into solar geoengineering, and set up an advisory panel that could suggest future options for the untested and controversial approach to reduce global heating, which would have implications for food supply, biodiversity, global inequality and security.

Investment comes after research showing Australia is at risk of missing out on global renewables manufacturing boom

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Thousands of Queenslanders could soon be employed in a globally competitive grid-scale battery export industry, with the state committing hundreds of millions in backing for the sector.

Centre for Future Work director, Jim Stanford, said the state’s shift towards long-unfashionable “industry policy” was “absolutely the right direction” for the entire country, not just Queensland.

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$275m to support industry to innovate and commercialise battery technologies, including a new Australian battery industrialisation centre.

$92.2m to drive battery investment and supply chain growth, including grants.

$202.5m to promote the local industry, including a new state government clearing house.

Britain joins France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands in withdrawing from charter it says ‘penalises’ shift to net zero

The UK is pulling out of a treaty that lets fossil fuel firms sue governments over their climate policies.

The UK will quit the controversial energy charter treaty (ECT) after efforts to align it with net zero emissions plans failed, the government announced late on Wednesday.

Team behind Little Amal puppet hope to create ‘visceral engagement’ with issues caused by climate emergency

The production team behind the Little Amal puppet, which raised awareness about the plight of the refugee crisis in Europe, hope their next project – a herd of animal puppets going on a 20,000km trek – will start a new global conversation about the climate crisis.

Amir Nizar Zuabi, the Palestinian artist who helped launch the Amal project, said The Herd – which will tour through several African and European cities and feature dozens of puppets – will be a “soft, beautiful evocation to think differently” about the climate crisis.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s proposed Project One cracking plant is ‘hugely destructive’, says Client Earth

The creation of the biggest petrochemical plant in Europe in 30 years faces a new legal challenge by a group of NGOs arguing that the true impact of the development on people, nature and the climate has not been considered.

Client Earth lodged papers on Wednesday evening in court which aim to halt the building of Project One, a vast cracking plant to produce the chemicals to make plastic, which is being built in Antwerp by Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s company Ineos.

With current data on global biodiversity either lacking or flawed, a global satellite scheme aims to fill the gaps to target protection of our seas, soils and wildlife

For the handful of people who get the chance to observe Earth from space, the impact is often profound. Called the “overview effect”, astronauts report being deeply moved by the experience, as the planet’s fragility and beauty became clear. Others, such as the actor William Shatner, said they were overcome with grief.

Now, scientists are proposing the creation of a new system that they hope will use the view from space to transform our understanding of Earth’s changing ecology and its complex systems.