The Guardian

Voters have made their position clear but our politicians are still not talking about how we can change the way we live and work to ease the climate crisis

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The last federal election was less than two years ago but the caravan moves on quickly. With politics dominated by cost-of-living concerns and daily distractions, it’s easy to forget the central role that dissatisfaction with the Coalition’s inaction and doublespeak on the climate crisis played in the result.

It wasn’t the only factor, but an in-depth study found it was the biggest issue in driving voters away from the major parties to independents. It was the second biggest in motivating people who changed their vote to Labor. It stands to reason it was at least as important in the Greens increasing their support and seat count.

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Exclusive: FOI request reveals fears many would sell up if they saw assessment of post-Brexit farming payments scheme

Government officials have buried an analysis of the financial prospects for some of the most vulnerable farmers in the UK after realising it was almost entirely bad news, the Guardian can reveal.

The analysis was to have been part of an optimistic look at the financial situation for upland farmers, some of the poorest in the country, but minutes from meetings about the plans obtained through a freedom of information request have revealed concerns were raised about the negative findings.

One official commented: “Could end up with no pathways to success at the end. We only want to publish if we have something which is positive to tell people.”

Government officials admitted that upland farmers were falling into financial crisis and may go out of business.

Officials feared that when upland farmers saw the data showing how much money they would make they would sell up.

Officials believed upland farmers were dismissive of the environment.

Agricultural sector hit by post-Brexit turmoil with protests over trade deals, environmental legislation and rising costs

Rishi Sunak will promise farmers the “largest ever” grant scheme tomorrow, as well as the creation of a food security index, after criticism that Brexit trade deals and poor responses to flooding and rising costs have put England’s ability to feed itself at risk.

Against a backdrop of turmoil in the agricultural sector, with farmers in the UK and across the continent causing havoc with tractor protests against environmental regulations and a perceived lack of support, Sunak will respond to farmers’ calls for a commitment from government that the UK’s food self-sufficiency will remain at or exceed the current estimated level, which is about 60%.

US research shows foods such as butter and processed meat likely to increase levels of toxic PFAS in blood over time

Diets rich in foods such as processed meat and butter likely increase levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in human blood over time, new peer-reviewed research has found.

The paper identified a range of foods to be among the drivers of high PFAS levels, including teas, pork, candy, sports drinks, processed meat, butter, chips and bottled water. The research also pointed to higher PFAS blood levels among those who consumed more carryout or food prepared at restaurants.

I was looking forward to a magnificently white winter, with school closures and an otherworldly hush. The weather had other ideas

I was excited to experience a Boston winter – being in snow country was a genuine attraction of our trip here – and last week looked set to deliver. The headlines were threatening me with a good time (“predicted to be heaviest snowfall in two years” and pre-emptive school closures ran in ticker tape across the TV screen). Cars started sporting snowplough attachments, and the yoga teacher ended class not with namaste but with an ominous: “Good luck with the storm.”

My husband and I were giddy as toddlers. Would there be six inches of snow? Twelve? “When I wake up at 4am,” my husband said gleefully, studying his weather app, “it should already be white.” At the shop he asked, in all seriousness, if we should buy a sledge “before they all sell out”.

Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist

System that brought heavy rains and strong winds to Northern Territory due to arrive in Western Australia

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) issued severe warnings across Northern Australia over the weekend due to a tropical cyclone called Lincoln. Making landfall on Friday afternoon as a category one Cyclone, Lincoln maintained its strength into the evening before being downgraded to a tropical low or ex-tropical cyclone (Ex-TC). By Saturday morning, 202mm of rain had fallen over 24 hours at Centre Island, located to the north-east of Borroloola and nearby to where Lincoln made landfall.

The Ex-TC then slowly tracked westwards across the Northern Territory as it brought heavy rainfall and damaging wind gusts to a series of districts. Warnings of flash flooding were issued by the BOM for a series of northern districts in the Northern Territory, with rainfall totals of 60-100mm forecast to fall within a six-hour period; 80-140mm expected over the 24-hour period. Tennant Creek, located in the west of the Barkly district, recorded 138.4mm of rain within 24 hours by Sunday morning.

Warning that soaring number of vessels threaten fish stocks and environment as geopolitics prevents agreement to regulate area

The scale of unregulated fishing in a disputed region close to the Falkland Islands has reached an “overwhelming” level that is threatening fish populations and the rich biodiversity of the area, politicians and environmentalists have claimed.

The “Blue Hole”, a stretch of the south Atlantic Ocean lying approximately 200 miles off the coast of Argentina and north of the Falkland Islands, is one of the only areas of sea that is not covered by a regional fishing agreement.

We need international gatherings if we are to find a common language to resist environmental destruction

In the autumn of 1945, the Scotsman newspaper reported excitedly on an ambitious project to establish Edinburgh as a world centre for music and drama. It would host the first great postwar international art assembly in Europe, with a mission to celebrate the “flowering of the human spirit”. Two years later, the Edinburgh international festival was born.

Seven decades on, that flowering might sometimes appear overabundant. Scotland alone has 18 book festivals this year, while the Association of Festival Organisers, which is currently updating a survey from 2022, estimates that, despite a ripple of post-Covid closures, there will as many as 900 music jamborees across the UK. Faced with the double whammy of shrinking incomes and vanishing subsidies, prices have risen and audiences have aged, while organisers face an annual scramble to fill gaping holes in their budgets that yawn wider the more brave and imaginative they are. Meanwhile, the search for alternative sources of funding, either from business or from overseas, has been repeatedly complicated by ethical issues.

At Native Cat Flat in Victoria’s Alpine national park, four fenced-off areas show a strikingly different ecology,  highlighting the damage wrought by more than 2,700 feral horses in the area. Behind the fences, lush sphagnum, dense vegetation, grass tussocks, shrubs and herbs thrive. Outside the plots, the ground is pockmarked with deep hoofprints, and the native grasses are overgrazed, exposing endangered animals in the area — which rely on dense vegetation — to predators

• ‘Feral horses don’t know state borders’: the push to protect Victoria’s Alpine national park

British producers to back EU’s proposed regulations to stop trade in adulterated honey

Britain’s beekeepers are backing ­proposed new rules to combat fraud in the supply chain, ensuring a jar of honey can be traced on its journey of up to 5,000 miles from the beehive to the shop shelf.

The European parliament has agreed new labelling rules and a project to establish a traceability system for honey from harvesting to the consumer. The proposed rules are part of an overhaul of the “breakfast directives”, including the honey directive.

Vast reforestation a major reason for ‘warming hole’ across parts of US where temperatures have flatlined or cooled

Trees provide innumerable benefits to the world, from food to shelter to oxygen, but researchers have now found their dramatic rebound in the eastern US has delivered a further, stunning feat – the curtailing of the soaring temperatures caused by the climate crisis.

While the US, like the rest of the world, has heated up since industrial times due to the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have long been puzzled by a so-called “warming hole” over parts of the US south-east where temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled, despite the unmistakable broader warming trend.

Rapid ocean warming and unusually hot winter days recorded as human-made global heating combines with El Niño

February is on course to break a record number of heat records, meteorologists say, as human-made global heating and the natural El Niño climate pattern drive up temperatures on land and oceans around the world.

A little over halfway into the shortest month of the year, the heating spike has become so pronounced that climate charts are entering new territory, particularly for sea-surface temperatures that have persisted and accelerated to the point where expert observers are struggling to explain how the change is happening.

Seventy perc ent of pregnant women in state had herbicide dicamba in their urine, up from 28% in an earlier study

Pregnant women in a key US farm state are showing increasing amounts of a toxic weedkiller in their urine, a rise that comes alongside climbing use of the chemicals in agriculture, according to a study published on Friday.

The study, led by the Indiana University school of medicine, showed that 70% of pregnant women tested in Indiana between 2020 and 2022 had a herbicide called dicamba in their urine, up from 28% from a similar analysis for the period 2010-12. The earlier study included women in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio.

Protests against Australia’s transition to renewable power have attracted a wide coalition of interests, from mainstream parties to the wild shores of conspiracy

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The protest signs at last week’s rally against renewables in Canberra spoke of hyperlocal concerns – but also cabals and plots of global proportion.

Some spoke of immediate worries linked to environmental policies: “Oberon betrayed by state forestry”; and “Say no to Twin Creek wind farm”.

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Four people died after heavy rain in the Middle Eastern country, which is one of the driest in the world

Abnormally high rainfall hit Oman and the United Arab Emirates on Monday, with heavy downpours and thunderstorms rolling in from the north-east. The two countries are among the driest in the world, with large parts of both typically receiving less than 100mm of rainfall each year. However, on Monday 50-100mm of rainfall was widely reported across eastern UAE and northern Oman, with a highest total of 140mm in Dibba, a city in the far north of Oman that lies on its border with the UAE. Some thunderstorms were accompanied by hail, with a particularly heavy shower in Abu Dhabi leaving the streets blanketed in hailstones, some of which were almost the size of golf balls.

Flooding was widespread, with flash flooding proving particularly dangerous in Oman’s mountainous regions. More than 100 people had to be rescued, many from stranded vehicles, while four fatalities were confirmed. Three stages of the Tour of Oman cycling race were curtailed due to landslides on some climbs. The UAE was less badly affected, but some schools were closed, while an official visit to Dubai by Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, was scaled down.

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

The animal translocation scheme by wildlife NGOs including African Parks, once headed by the royal, has been dogged by controversy

Four more people have died after an elephant translocation overseen by two wildlife organisations, including one that was headed by Prince Harry, in a protected area in Malawi. The recent deaths bring the total fatalities connected to the relocated elephants to seven.

In July 2022, more than 250 elephants were moved from Liwonde national park in southern Malawi to the country’s second-largest protected area, Kasungu, in a three-way operation between Malawi’s national park service and two NGOs: the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), and African Parks. Prince Harry was president of African Parks for six years, before being elevated to the board of directors from 2023.

Brussels is ditching green measures as EU leaders panic over rural protests, upcoming elections and the threat of the far right

Ursula von der Leyen surrendered to angry farmers last week faster than you could shake a pitchfork or dump a tractor-load of manure outside the European parliament. The European Commission president, expected to announce her candidacy for a second term heading the EU executive next week, told lawmakers that the commission was withdrawing a bill to halve the use of chemical pesticides by 2030 and would hold more consultations instead.

The proposed measure was a key plank in the commission’s European Green Deal and its Farm to Fork strategy, intended to make the EU carbon-neutral by 2050, make agriculture more environmentally friendly and preserve biodiversity.

An overturned barge has been leaking oil into the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago, prompting authorities on the island nation to declare a state of emergency. Satellite imagery showed parts of the Trinidadian coast dyed black from the spill, and the leak began reaching nearby Venezuela and Grenada. Farley Augustine, chief secretary of Tobago’s House of Assembly, said: 'We need those responsible to come clean and we need those responsible to know that they have to pay for this mess, that they are culpable as part of this mess'

• Trinidad & Tobago says oil spill from mystery vessel is national emergency

• Tobago oil spill spreads to Grenada waters and could affect Venezuela

The Tijuana River flows through Mexico and empties off California, carrying pathogens and chemicals and threatening public health

Raw sewage and runoff in the Tijuana River is exposing communities at the US-Mexico border to an unusual and noxious brew of pathogens and toxic chemicals, according to a report released this week.

Billions of gallons of sewage flow through the river, which winds north from Mexico through California and empties into the Pacific Ocean, containing a mix of carcinogenic chemicals including arsenic, as well as viruses, bacteria and parasites, according to public health researchers at San Diego State University, who published the report.