The Guardian

It is ‘absolutely illogical’ not to tackle the risks of heatwaves and power blackouts, says Climate Change Committee

The UK government is failing to protect people from the fast-rising risks of the climate crisis, from deadly heatwaves to power blackouts, its official climate advisers have warned.

The climate change committee said action to improve the nation’s resilience is not keeping pace with the impacts of global heating, many of which are already causing harm. The CCC’s experts said they were frustrated by the “absolutely illogical” lack of sufficient action on adaptation, particularly as acting is up to 10 times more cost-effective than not doing so.

Those who bear a disproportionate share of a carbon tax will mobilise against it … unless they are given reason not to

In his classic book, The Logic of Collective Action, the late great Mancur Olson explained that the hardest policies to implement are those with diffuse benefits and concentrated costs. Olson’s argument was straightforward: individuals bearing the costs will vigorously oppose the policy, while the beneficiaries will free ride, preferring that someone else take up the cudgels.

Olson’s insight applies to the single most pressing policy challenge facing humanity today, namely the climate crisis. The starting point for addressing it, economists agree, is a tax on carbon. The resulting reduction in emissions would deliver benefits to virtually everyone on the planet. But specific segments of society – Olson’s concentrated interests – will bear a disproportionate share of the costs and mobilise in opposition.

Scientists concerned as severe perkinsea infection found in European tree frog tadpoles kept in an aquarium in Surrey

A disease that causes mass die-offs in frogs has been found in captive UK populations for the first time, scientists have warned.

Severe perkinsea infection (SPI) has caused large tadpole mortality events across the US, and this is the first proof that its geographic range is spreading. Researchers also found the disease-causing microbe in wild and seemingly healthy populations in Panama, where some of the most rapid declines in frog populations globally have occurred.

Traces of drugs found in water can make crustaceans more outgoing – but also vulnerable to predators

Antidepressant drugs in water can alter the behaviour of crayfish, making them bolder and more outgoing, and therefore more vulnerable to predators, researchers have found.

Low levels of antidepressants – excreted by humans or disposed of incorrectly – are found in many water bodies. Researchers from the University of Florida assessed the impact of these medicines on crayfish, which are a fundamental component of many aquatic food webs – given they eat almost everything, from plants, insects, leaf litter to small fish (even cannibalising each other).

Increasing droughts in producer nations will also make palm oil and soya imports highly vulnerable, study finds

Coffee and chocolate supplies in Europe soon could be disrupted by the climate crisis as droughts hit producer countries, according to a study.

The research also found a high vulnerability for palm oil imports, used in many foods and domestic products, and soybeans, which are the main feed for chickens and pigs in the European Union.

It isn’t clear yet if president will follow recommendation, but during his campaign he pledged to restore Utah’s monuments

It was one of Donald Trump’s most provocative environmental decisions. After a year in office, he angered preservationists and Native American tribes and ordered that two treasured national monuments be dramatically reduced in size.

The areas falling outside the diminished monuments, both expanses of rocky outcroppings dense with archaeological artifacts in Utah, lost environmental protections. A few years later, he also ordered that commercial fishing be allowed in a marine preserve off the coast of New England.

From food standards to fossil fuel exports, Britain’s agreement with Australia could stop us dealing with the climate crisis

Over the weekend, Boris Johnson told the world we need to “create a healthy planet for our children and grandchildren”. Today he launches a trade deal which is not simply as inadequate as the pledges made by Johnson and other leaders at the G7, but is more worryingly moving us rapidly in the wrong direction.

The trade rules contained in the UK-Australia deal will be a disaster for the environment. On the one hand, it will certainly increase carbon emissions if we replace food from Britain, or our near neighbours, with food from a country on the opposite side of the world.

Production of chemical could help make recycling more attractive and tackle global plastic pollution

Plastic bottles have been converted into vanilla flavouring using genetically engineered bacteria, the first time a valuable chemical has been brewed from waste plastic.

Upcycling plastic bottles into more lucrative materials could make the recycling process far more attractive and effective. Currently plastics lose about 95% of their value as a material after a single use. Encouraging better collection and use of such waste is key to tackling the global plastic pollution problem.

The Ogmore is an unremarkable river ... or is it? Dan Wood’s photographs capture a place of childhood mischief and intrigue

To eat an oyster raw is to eat it alive

On the oyster’s edge, under the sea, on a rock, a tree root, a bamboo pole, a pebble, a tile or another shell, the bivalve’s cilia – from the Latin for eyelash – are waving. Together, they move water over the oyster’s gills – its shell is open, its muscles are relaxed. The oyster has lungs. It has a three-chambered heart. An hour passes; the oyster has filtered five litres of water. The oyster has listened to the breaking waves: it opens and closes according to the tides.

One valve is the cupped half of the shell, the other is the flat half. A cargo ship sounds its horn. The oyster shuts in fright.

Hot weather bakes in disadvantage. Regenerating natural and living ecosystems will help us all

A century ago the British critic and crime writer GK Chesterton declared that crime fiction is the poetry of the city. Chesterton’s point was that the city is more attuned to the poetry of contemporary life than the country, but his observation also hit upon something no less important, which is that the structures that shape social and economic life are visible in their concentrated forms in the urban environment.

This is especially true when it comes to the impacts of global heating. As our cities get hotter the inequities embedded in them are intensifying rapidly. A 45C day in Sydney’s inner city isn’t fun, but residents of the affluent suburbs close to the centre tend to live in well-appointed, air-conditioned houses and apartments, as well as enjoying easy access to beaches, parks, pools and libraries where they can find refuge from the heat.

Laurence Tubiana, a key player in 2015 Paris summit, says UK and others must explain how they will achieve climate goals

Rich countries must come forward with detailed plans on how they hope to meet their climate targets, and Boris Johnson must forge much closer relationships with developing countries to bring about the breakthrough needed on the climate crisis this year, one of the architects of the Paris agreement has said.

The G7 summit, which ended on Sunday in Cornwall, achieved much less than campaigners had hoped, with no significant new cash forthcoming for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, on the frontlines of climate breakdown.

Biodiversity pledge is part of formal response to landmark review of economic importance of nature

The UK government has committed to leaving the environment in “a better state than we found it” in response to a landmark review of the economic importance of nature.

Major transport and energy infrastructure projects in England will need to provide a net-gain for biodiversity, and the government said it would ensure all new bilateral aid spending did not harm the natural world as part of an effort to ensure a “nature-positive” future.

As the world moves towards electric cars and renewable grids, demand for lithium is wreaking havoc in northern Chile

The Atacama salt flat is a majestic, high-altitude expanse of gradations of white and grey, peppered with red lagoons and ringed by towering volcanoes. It took me a moment to get my bearings on my first visit, standing on this windswept plateau of 3,000 sq km (1,200 sq miles). A vertiginous drive had taken me and two other researchers through a sandstorm, a rainstorm, and the peaks and valleys of this mountainous region of northern Chile. The sun bore down on us intensely – the Atacama desert boasts the Earth’s highest levels of solar radiation, and only parts of Antarctica are drier.

I had come to the salt flat to research an emerging environmental dilemma. In order to stave off the worst of the accelerating climate crisis, we need to rapidly reduce carbon emissions. To do so, energy systems around the world must transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Lithium batteries play a key role in this transition: they power electric vehicles and store energy on renewable grids, helping to cut emissions from transportation and energy sectors. Underneath the Atacama salt flat lies most of the world’s lithium reserves; Chile currently supplies almost a quarter of the global market. But extracting lithium from this unique landscape comes at a grave environmental and social cost.

Underreporting by water companies and failure to hold them to account have resulted in ecological damage, analysis shows

Water companies are being allowed to unlawfully discharge raw sewage into rivers at a scale at least 10 times greater than Environment Agency prosecutions indicate, according to analysis to be presented to the government.

The number of prosecutions of English water companies for unlawful spills from sewage treatment plants in 10 years are just a tiny fraction of the scale of potentially illegal discharges, the research presented to the environment minister, Rebecca Pow, this week will suggest.

Plastic bags, straws and cutlery, along with polystyrene, will be banned as part of a five-year $365m plan

Lightweight plastic bags, disposable plastic straws and cutlery, plastic cotton buds and microbeads will be banned in New South Wales from next year, as part of a state government push to reduce plastic litter by 30% by 2025.

Reducing plastic waste is part of a wider $356m five-year plan from the NSW government that will also see a new “green” bin for food and organic waste rolled out to homes across the state by 2030 – something the state’s environment minister Matt Kean says will help reduce emissions in landfill and allow greater extraction of biogas from waste.

Boris Johnson announces £500m for ‘blue planet fund’, but pledge was contained in 2019 Conservative manifesto

Boris Johnson has set out his intention to “build back better for the world”, to protect the natural environment and wildlife, and tackle the climate crisis, at the G7 summit in Cornwall. But he committed no new funds to the initiative, and other G7 leaders showed little sign of coming forward with the cash commitments that campaigners said were needed to help developing countries cope with the climate emergency.

Announcing £500m to be spent on a “blue planet fund”, for the protection of the oceans and coastal areas in poor countries, he said: “As democratic nations, we have a responsibility to help developing countries reap the benefits of clean growth through a fair and transparent system. The G7 has an unprecedented opportunity to drive a global green industrial revolution, with the potential to transform the way we live.

Photographer Kathryn Martin started working with wildflowers when she lived in London. Inspired by the copperplate engravings in 18th-century botanist William Curtis’s eight-volume Flora Londinensis, she digitally photographs native wildflowers against graph paper. The idea developed when she moved to the South Downs and collected flowers on her daily walks as a way to connect with the landscape. The resultant exhibition – called Come, See Real Flowers of this Painful World, after a haiku by Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō – is on show at London design shop Egg. “Wildflower habitats are in sharp decline, but are a vital source of food and shelter for countless species,” Martin says. “I want my photographs to show how beautiful these plants are, to encourage people to notice them, and perhaps even sow their own patch.”

‘Premature austerity will threaten growth’ as world recovers from Covid-19, says climate economist

Wealthy nations must ignore calls to rein in public spending as the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic gathers pace, or risk a fresh crisis, the climate economist Nicholas Stern has warned.

Leaders of the G7 industrialised countries are meeting in Cornwall this weekend, to discuss vaccines, the recovery from the pandemic, and the climate crisis.

‘Queen of the Deep’ says it is not too late to reverse human-made damage to oceans and preserve biodiversity

The world has the opportunity in the next 10 years to restore our oceans to health after decades of steep decline – but to achieve that, people must wake up to the problem, join in efforts to protect marine areas and stop eating tuna, according to the oceanographer and deep sea explorer Sylvia Earle.

“We are at the most exciting time maybe ever to be a human, because we’re armed with knowledge,” said Earle, also known as the Queen of the Deep and “her Deepness”. Earle has also set numerous records for deep sea diving, and was the first woman to serve as chief scientist of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.