The Guardian

Citizen Zoo plans to reintroduce animals in Tottenham as part of effort to ‘beaver up’ the capital

Beavers are set to be released in London in the UK’s most significant urban reintroduction, the Guardian can reveal.

It is hoped the rodents, which went extinct in the UK 400 years ago after being hunted for their fur and an oil they produce, will be brought to a site in Tottenham.

Scientists find micro-organisms from the bovine stomach have ability to degrade polyesters in lab setting

Bacteria found in one of the compartments of a cow’s stomach can break down plastic, research suggests.

Since the 1950s, more than 8bn tonnes of plastic have been produced – equivalent in weight to 1 billion elephants – driven predominantly by packaging, single-use containers, wrapping and bottles. As a result, plastic pollution is all-pervasive, in the water and in the air, with people unwittingly consuming and breathing microplastic particles. In recent years, researchers have been working on harnessing the ability of tiny microscopic bugs to break down the stubborn material.

Group of reef and climate scientists say world heritage warning merited and Australia has not ‘pulled its weight on emissions’

Five of the world’s leading reef and climate scientists have thanked Unesco for recommending the Great Barrier Reef be listed as world heritage “in danger”, saying it was the right decision in part because Australia had not “pulled its weight” in reducing emissions.

The group of scientists, including the Australian professors Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Terry Hughes, wrote to the UN body on Thursday saying the recommendation to downgrade the 2,300-km reef system’s world heritage status was “the right decision”.

‘Occasionally a big male would wake the echoes of the mountains with his tremendous voice’

It is difficult to take yourself seriously in the presence of a baboon, but I have tried. The university I attended is at the foot of Cape Town’s Table Mountain and every now and then a chacma baboon or several would clamber down to our world.

There they were: on the avenue that bisected the campus, where a highly evolved professor parked his vintage sports car. Where film students arranged themselves on windowsills. There were people trying to take themselves seriously all over the place. It was like every university. Only here, we had baboons.

Governments urged to ramp up efforts to tackle climate emergency as temperature records smashed

Climate scientists have said nowhere is safe from the kind of extreme heat events that have hit the western US and Canada in recent days and urged governments to dramatically ramp up their efforts to tackle the escalating climate emergency.

The devastating “heat dome” has caused temperatures to rise to almost 50C in Canada and has been linked to hundreds of deaths, melted power lines, buckled roads and wildfires.

Neighborhood streets have become ghost towns. Stepping outside feels like stepping into a sauna. A 10-minute stroll feels like a 20-minute run

The city with the best summers in the nation just hit 108F (42.2C) degrees.

As a lifelong Seattle-area resident and so-called geriatric millennial, I can attest to the fact that, until recently, Seattle summers truly were second to none in the comfortability department. Highs in the 70s? Check. Bluebird skies after morning clouds? Check. Pleasant sea breezes in the evening to take the edge off the day’s warmth? Check.

Nation scores just 10 out of 100 on tackling fossil fuel emissions in new report on sustainable development goals

Australia has been ranked last for climate action out of nearly 200 countries in a report assessing progress towards global sustainable development goals.

The Sustainable Development Report 2021, first reported by Renew Economy, scored Australia last out of 193 United Nations member countries for action taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Paul Crawford’s crops are dying. Salmon sacred to Frankie Myers’ Native American tribe are slipping away. Along the California-Oregon border, the climate crisis is worsening a water crisis decades in the making – leaving farmers and indigenous communities scrambling to keep their traditions alive.

Conservationists say Pembroke Resources mine will increase carbon emissions and wouldn’t need public money if financially viable

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The Morrison government has announced a $175m loan to help build a large new metallurgical coalmine in central Queensland, in a move conservationists have labelled “deeply irresponsible”.

Climate campaigners have said the loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (Naif) to develop the $900m Olive Downs mine in the Bowen Basin was “a bad idea”. They argued the Pembroke Resources project would increase global carbon emissions by contributing to “dirty” steelmaking and would not need public backing if it was financially viable.

Team behind project at United Downs site near Redruth say power plant will be producing electricity and heat by next year

It has taken a decade of hard graft – and some bold, imaginative thinking – but a plume of steam finally exploded into the clear Cornish air, a signal of what is being heralded as a breakthrough for an energy project that taps into the hot rocks of the far south-west of Britain.

The blast of steam at the United Downs site near Redruth, once a global mining capital, is being billed as proof that deep geothermal power can be part of the solution to the UK’s search for alternative sources of energy.

Adopting insect protein in pig and poultry feed could reduce UK soya consumption by a fifth by 2050, says WWF study

Insect protein in animal feed could replace 20% of the UK’s soya consumption by 2050, according to a report by WWF.

The study, which sets out a plan for the UK to accelerate the adoption of insect protein in animal feed, also found that just under half of the demand for the protein could be met by British producers.

The US president blamed the climate crisis for a record-breaking heatwave when he met governors from western states as fierce wildfires burn in northern California. 'Climate change is driving a dangerous confluence of extreme heat and prolonged drought,' Biden said. 'Wildfires are not a partisan phenomenon. They don't stop at a county or a state line or country line for that matter.'

• Heatwave: Biden and Harris meet western governors as region in emergency
• Joe Biden blames climate crisis for deadly heatwave in western US and Canada

Campaigners criticise appointment of Michael Gill as ICAO’s director of legal affairs and external relations

Environmental groups have criticised the UN body tasked with cutting global aircraft emissions for hiring a former senior airline industry lobbyist to a senior role.

Campaigners say the recruitment of Michael Gill to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) reflects its flaws and bias toward the industry.

Without an immediate global effort to combat the climate emergency, the Earth’s uninhabitable areas will keep growing

The climate crisis means that summer is a time of increasingly dangerous heat. This week in the Pacific north-west, temperature records are not just being broken, they are being obliterated. Temperatures reached a shocking 47.9C in British Columbia, Canada. Amid temperatures more typically found in the Sahara desert, dozens have died of heat stress, with “roads buckling and power cables melting”.

Related: How did a small town in Canada become one of the hottest places on Earth?

The unprecedented heatwave in the Pacific north-west risks becoming the new normal if we don’t act now

On Sunday, the small mountain town of Lytton, British Columbia, became one of the hottest places in the world. Then, on Monday, Lytton got even hotter – 47.9C (118F – hotter than it’s ever been in Las Vegas, 1,300 miles to the south.

Lytton is at 50 deg N latitude – about the same as London. This part of the world should never get this hot. Seattle’s new all-time record of 108F, also set Monday, is hotter than it’s ever been in Miami. In Portland, the new record of 116F would beat the warmest day ever recorded in Houston by nearly 10 degrees.

Via an unprecedented wave of lawsuits, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for the devastation caused by fossil fuels

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After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes.

An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way.

Fossil fuel companies lied for decades about climate change, and humanity is paying the price. Shouldn’t those lies be central to the public narrative?

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Every person on Earth today is living in a crime scene.

This crime has been going on for decades. We see its effects in the horrific heat and wildfires unfolding this summer in the American west; in the mega-storms that were so numerous in 2020 that scientists ran out of names for them; in the global projections that sea levels are set to rise by at least 20ft. Our only hope is to slow this inexorable ascent so our children may figure out some way to cope.

This is serious enough for the 1% to start building bunkers ready for environmental collapse

A few years ago, the author and academic Douglas Rushkoff got invited to a swanky private resort to talk to a bunch of obscenely rich hedge fund guys about the future of technology. He thought they were going to ask him how technology was going to improve the world, but they were far more interested in discussing the “Event”, their cutesy term for the collapse of civilisation. “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the Event?” one CEO, who had just finished building an underground bunker system, reportedly asked. The rest of the conversation, detailed by Rushkoff in a Guardian feature, continued in that vein.

That Rushkoff piece was published in 2018, but I’ve found myself thinking about it a lot over the past few days. Why? Because the Event is starting to feel imminent. If that sounds alarmist, just take a look at the weather. Severe storms have caused extensive flooding in Detroit. Canada just set its highest temperature on record: a village in British Columbia reached 46.1C (115F) on Sunday. The US’s Pacific north-west also broke heat records over the weekend, with Portland, Oregon, reaching 44.4C (112F). Seattle, which isn’t exactly known for its sunshine, just had triple-digit temperatures for three days straight, breaking another record. The US National Weather Service in Washington has called the current heatwave “historic, dangerous, prolonged and unprecedented”.

Fossil fuel levy can be avoided by buying carbon offsets that may have no benefit for climate

Forest protection carbon offsets that may have no benefit to the climate have been used by polluters to avoid paying carbon taxes in Colombia, according to a report.

In 2016, a levy of about $5 (£3.60) was introduced in the South American country to cover the use of some fossil fuels. However, companies that emit carbon dioxide can avoid paying the tax by buying carbon offsets from Colombian emission reduction projects, including those that conserve threatened natural carbon banks such as peatlands, forests and mangrove swamps.

The demise of the freshly emerged swallowtail makes me ponder all butterflies’ chances of survival

Last week, I witnessed a wondrous and slightly horrifying spectacle of nature.

I was admiring a swallowtail, Britain’s largest native butterfly, as it jinked over a waterway on the Norfolk Broads. Suddenly, an emperor dragonfly cruised in and grabbed the butterfly. There was a mid-air tussle for five seconds, before the iridescent blue dragonfly dropped into the reed bed with its prize.