The Guardian

We’ve learned that there is a bigger power than humanity. Now coronavirus has shown that to communities across the world

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When news of the pandemic broke out in California and we were ordered to shelter at home, many of us rifled through our closets for our bulk packages of protective N95 masks that we’d worn in last year’s fire, and the fires the year before that, and the fires the year before that, and wondered if we should donate them to the hospitals or keep them for ourselves.

This time, wearing masks was about protecting the vulnerable and at-risk from ourselves. But we will need the masks to protect ourselves from the fires that will likely come back this summer and fall. Presumably, there won’t be any N95 masks left by that time, when we’ll need protection from the smoke if we’re ordered to evacuate, as we had to last year, for more than a week, when the Kincade fire scorched 77,758 acres of our county of Sonoma.

I worked for the EPA for 33 years. We can’t let this administration obliterate half a century of environmental progress

On the first Earth Day in 1970, millions of Americans took to the streets to demand clean air, water and land, and advocate for a healthier and more sustainable environment. By the end of the year, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded.

Related: EPA faces court over backing of Monsanto's controversial crop system

Taking down the fossil fuel industry requires taking on the institutions that finance it. Even during a pandemic, this movement is gaining steam

1970 was a simpler time. (February was a simpler time too, but for a moment let’s think outside the pandemic bubble.)

Simpler because our environmental troubles could be easily seen. The air above our cities was filthy, and the water in our lakes and streams was gross. There was nothing subtle about it. In New York City, the environmental lawyer Albert Butzel described a permanently yellow horizon: “I not only saw the pollution, I wiped it off my windowsills.” Or consider the testimony of a city medical examiner: “The person who spent his life in the Adirondacks has nice pink lungs. The city dweller’s are black as coal.” You’ve probably heard of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River catching fire, but here’s how the former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller described the Hudson south of Albany: “One great septic tank that has been rendered nearly useless for water supply, for swimming, or to support the rich fish life that once abounded there.” Everything that people say about the air and water in China and India right now was said of America’s cities then.

More than 11,000 cases of dead and sick birds reported in past fortnight

Thousands of blue tits have been found sick or dead in Germany, prompting an investigation by conservation groups and scientists.

More than 11,000 cases of dead and sick birds, mostly blue tits, have been reported to the German conservation group NABU in the past fortnight. Most of these are reported from the west of Germany.

The blue tit is found across Europe and is one of the most common visitors to UK gardens. They eat insects, caterpillars, seeds and nuts and can be spotted all year round in the UK, with the exception of some Scottish islands.

According to NABU, symptoms of the diseased birds include breathing problems, no longer taking food and making no attempt to escape when approached by people. The group is advising people to stop feeding or providing drinking troughs for birds to reduce the risk of transmission between them.

The first laboratory test results on the dead birds have found a bacterial infection (Suttonella ornithocola) that has been known in the UK since the 1990s and which affects birds similarly. The infection was reported in Germany in 2018. Further test results on birds are expected over the next few days.

The infection discovered causes pneumonia in tits – predominantly blue tits – and they become lethargic with fluffed-up plumage and breathing difficulties. There are no reports of this affecting any other animals apart from birds.

Animals have started taking advantage of cities as they enter lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. From New Delhi, India to Buenos Aires, Argentina, groups of animals including deer and lemurs have started to come out to explore – in search of food or just to play

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Coronavirus has led to reduced pollution, re-emerging wildlife and plunging oil prices and shown the size of the task facing humanity

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The skies are clearing of pollution, wildlife is returning to newly clear waters, a host of flights have been scrapped and crude oil is so worthless that the industry would have to pay you to take it off their hands – a few months ago, environmentalists could only dream of such a scenario as the 50th anniversary of Earth Day hove into view.

But this disorientingly green new reality is causing little cheer given the cause is the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged much of the world.

Activists hold mass video calls and share hashtags, and three-day livestream planned for Earth Day

The large crowds and brightly coloured placards of the school climate strikes became some of the defining images of 2019.

“There would be lots of chanting and the energy was always amazing,” says Dominique Palmer, a 20-year-old climate activist from London who has been involved with the strikes for more than a year. “Being there with everyone in that moment is truly an electrifying feeling. It’s very different now.”

When the coronavirus crisis ends, let’s demand a right to roam in cities, the countryside and on golf courses

In the name of freedom, we have been exposed, to a greater extent than any other European nation, to a deadly pandemic. In his speech in Greenwich on 3 February, Boris Johnson lambasted governments that had “panicked” about the coronavirus, inflicting “unnecessary economic damage”. His government, by contrast, would champion our right to “buy and sell freely among each other”.

But as always, the professed love of freedom among those who represent the interests of the rich in politics is highly selective. If the government valued freedom as much as it says it does, it would do everything in its power to maximise the liberties we can safely exercise, while protecting us from harm.

The 50th annual call for environmental reform falls at a time when the health of people and nature has never been more urgent

Fifty years ago today, the first Earth Day was marked in the United States as a peaceful call for environmental reform, following a massive oil spill off the coast of California. Half a century later, this annual day unites millions across the globe, drawing attention to the huge challenges facing our planet.

Now more than ever, Earth Day offers an opportunity for us all to reflect upon our relationship with the planet, amid the most powerful possible message that nature can surprise us at any moment, with devastating consequences for pretty much every individual. It is a time when the health of the planet and its people has never been so important.

Tearfund NGO says drinks makers not doing enough to tackle their plastic pollution

Coca-Cola and Pepsi are not doing enough to reduce their plastic waste footprint globally, according to a report.

The charity Tearfund has compiled a league table of how the companies, and Unilever and Nestlé, are faring in their commitments set against a three-point plan.

Efforts to protect the European eel, under threat from pollution and the damming of rivers, are having some success

This is the peak season for the arrival of what is hoped will be millions of glass eels swimming up Britain’s estuaries to reach fresh waters where they can grow into adults. The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is a curious creature with a complex lifestyle that is still barely understood.

Eels are thought to begin life as eggs in the Sargasso Sea; drifting as larvae for about a year 4,000 miles north-east in the Gulf Stream before turning into tiny transparent eels. Their goal is to find a home in rivers, lakes and ponds while growing darker and larger for up to 10 years. When nearly a metre long they set off back across the Atlantic to breed.

Some councils confirm halt to recycling as lockdown puts pressure on disposal services

Councils are burning household recycling after being hit by a massive surge in domestic waste and coronavirus-related staff absences during the pandemic, the Guardian has learned.

Councils in Cardiff, St Helens and Inverclyde confirmed they were temporarily incinerating recycling, while those in Oldham, Redbridge and West Dunbartonshire also said they had stepped down their recycling services for the time being. A further six authorities have stopped collecting glass or cardboard.

The need for physical distancing means that space in our towns and cities must be shared in new ways

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It is clear that the ways we travel, and use transport, will not be the same after the coronavirus outbreak as they were before. What we don’t know is which changes will turn out to have been temporary, and which permanent. Flights from European airports are down by 90% from a year ago, for example. But is this a blip? Reports of strong demand for winter flights suggest it might be.

There are no comparable figures that suggest how many car journeys the UK should expect in six months or a year’s time. But it is to be hoped that the huge reduction in motor traffic caused by the virus will not be completely reversed. Already, cities including Milan and New York have announced ambitious plans to reconfigure roads in such a way as to make more space for cyclists and pedestrians.

Experts say a link is plausible as dirty air is known to harm lungs, but more research is needed

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A preliminary study has found the first evidence of a link between higher levels of air pollution and deaths from Covid-19 in England.

The analysis showed London, the Midlands and the north-west had the highest levels of nitrogen oxides and higher numbers of coronavirus deaths.

Photographer Joan Alvado’s Last Man on Earth project captured winter in Spain’s Serranía Celtibérica, the most depopulated area of Europe after Lapland. What happens when everyone’s gone?

Bushfires reduced numbers from 500 to 50 but newly discovered populations are cause for optimism, conservationists say

Hopes that Kangaroo Island’s unique mouse-like dunnart can be saved from extinction have been boosted after the tiny marsupial was captured on camera at a new location.

More than 90% of the threatened Kangaroo Island dunnart’s habitat was burned in bushfires in early January.

He got trampled by elephants, swam in crocodile-infested waters and was painted by Francis Bacon – while making images revealing man’s plunder of the natural world

The American writer Bob Colacello once described the young Peter Beard, who has died aged 82, as “half-Tarzan, half-Byron”, neatly encapsulating the larger-than-life charisma of an artist whose reputation for adventure and excess often overshadowed his creative talent. As a 2007 Vanity Fair profile put it: “Whether he’s at a New York nightclub or deep in the African wilderness, world-famous photographer and artist Peter Beard is surrounded by drugs, debts, and beautiful women.”

Related: Peter Beard, photographer, wildlife advocate and socialite, dies at 82

Research shows almost 80% of deaths across four countries were in most polluted regions

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High levels of air pollution may be “one of the most important contributors” to deaths from Covid-19, according to research.

The analysis shows that of the coronavirus deaths across 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France and Germany, 78% of them occurred in just five regions, and these were the most polluted.

Major pork plant closed after hundreds of workers contract coronavirus, while speeding up of poultry production lines raises concerns over standards

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The US government is accelerating controversial regulatory rollbacks to speed up production at meat plants, as companies express growing alarm at the impact of Covid-19 on their operations.

Last week Smithfield shut down one of the largest pork plants in the country after hundreds of employees contracted the coronavirus. The plant in South Dakota – whose output represents 4–5% of US pork production – is reported to be the largest single-source coronavirus hotspot in the US, with more than 600 cases. In response, the company said it was “critical” for the meat industry to “continue to operate unabated”.

Now it has emerged that as a wave of plants announce closures, US meat plants are being granted permission to increase the speed of their production lines. This comes despite warnings that the waivers for higher speeds on slaughter and processing lines will compromise food safety.

The convergence of the climate and coronavirus crisis will be catastrophic. Now is the time to deploy a green stimulus

The Covid-19 epidemic is ravaging our tattered healthcare system and shredding our economy. In the past month, over 22 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits, compounding the fear that unemployment could breach 32% absent massive public action. This is an unmitigated human disaster, recalling the horrors of the Great Depression. And it gets worse. We’re also facing the climate emergency. Immediate relief is necessary – but not sufficient. To tackle all these crises at once, we need a Green Stimulus that creates jobs and lifts up communities in ways that also slash carbon pollution, increase resiliency, and develop a just, modern economy.

No one can predict when Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump will turn their full attention to economic recovery. But behind the scenes, the planning has already begun. It’s not a question of whether we spend big on stimulus, but what kind of stimulus.