The Guardian

Results suggest environmental factors could play a role in female reproductive health

Air pollution has been linked to a drop in activity of a woman’s ovaries, researchers have revealed.

Experts say the findings suggest the female reproductive system is affected by environmental factors, although the study does not look specifically at the impact of air pollution on fertility.

Film taken by the charity Animal Equality earlier this year shows the quality of life endured by birds on three farms of one of the UK’s biggest chicken producers. The farms, in Lincolnshire, were holding birds in cramped conditions, with birds found to be lame, struggling to breathe and surrounded by carcasses

Secret filming at three Moy Park farms in Lincolnshire shows birds that are lame, struggling to breathe and surrounded by carcasses

One of the UK’s biggest chicken producers has been keeping chickens in cramped conditions on three farms in Lincolnshire, including in enormous “double-decker” multi-storey buildings, where secretly filmed footage shows chickens that are lame, struggling to breathe and surrounded by dead birds.

From across their sites in Northern Ireland and England, Moy Park supplies 30% of the British poultry market, including Tesco, Ocado and Sainsbury’s. The supermarkets have told the Guardian they they are now investigating their supply chains after the footage was sent to them.

Right to life is likely to be undermined alongside the rule of law, special rapporteur says

The world is increasingly at risk of “climate apartheid”, where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said.

Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law.

The giant manta ray is at risk in the Pacific ocean, but the rise of ecotourism is changing attitudes among local fishermen

Fishermen heading out to sea off Peru’s northern coast keep a keen eye on the turquoise waters below them, hoping for a glimpse of the elusive giant manta ray gliding by.

Nowadays the boats are taking tourists rather than nets. The fish they once caught are now in decline, and the fish the visitors want to see now are worth far more alive than dead.

Contenders for prizes in the competition developed jointly by Forestry England and the Royal Geographical Society. The photographs will be displayed at the RGS, London, from 6 July-22 August

Open letter calls on the prime minister to block all new coal and gas projects, including Adani

More than 150 religious leaders have called on Scott Morrison to acknowledge the world faces a climate emergency and block all new coal and gas projects, including Adani’s Carmichael mine.

In an open letter headed “no faith in coal”, the leaders say the climate crisis is a profoundly moral problem and Australia’s response will be crucial in addressing it.

Major economies pledged a decade ago to phase out all aid for fossil fuels

G20 nations have almost tripled the subsidies they give to coal-fired power plants in recent years, despite the urgent need to cut the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis.

The bloc of major economies pledged a decade ago to phase out all fossil fuel subsidies.

Discover Australia’s threatened plant species, as well as their major threats

Humans are devastating the world’s plants and causing a “frightening” number of extinctions, according to a global scientific survey of the issue. This is certainly the case in Australia, where plants make up 72% of the total threatened species list, with 1,308 listed species, and 370 species listed as critically endangered or endangered at a state level. This accelerating decline in the world’s biodiversity will have grave consequences for human society according to the UN’s recent global assessment report.

In Australia, recent research by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub listed the 100 plants that are most at risk. Dr Jennifer Silcock from the University of Queensland said the list, published in the Australian Journal of Botany, showed the main threats were urbanisation, inappropriate fire regimes, introduced plant disease and habitat loss.

Treasury proposes rise from 5% to 20%, while the tax on coal will stay at lower rate

Homes hoping to shrink their carbon footprints by installing a solar-battery system face a steep VAT increase from October under new laws proposed by HMRC.

The Treasury put forward legislation on Monday to raise VAT for home solar-battery systems from 5% to 20%, on the same day that MPs are debating the government’s new net zero carbon target for 2050.

Conservationists urge Sussan Ley to get her priorities right, saying her job is to protect species, not industries

Victoria’s faunal emblem, the tiny Leadbeater’s possum, will keep its critically endangered listing after the environment minister, Sussan Ley, rejected a push by Coalition MPs to downgrade its conservation status.

But Ley has been criticised for suggesting a long-delayed recovery plan for the possum should also consider the needs of the Victorian timber industry.

Ana María Hernández says shifting society out of ‘comfort zone’ is difficult, but young people are inspiring

The survival of the natural world upon which humanity depends hangs in the balance, according to the new chair of the global scientific body for biodiversity.

Ana María Hernández said she did not know if society could make the major changes needed to stop the annihilation of wildlife, which some scientists thought was the start of a mass extinction. It would be very difficult to shift society out of its current “comfort zone” of business-as-usual, but she thought the much higher environmental awareness among young people was a reason for great optimism.

Rangers and scientists and a white cartoonist converge for the night parrot but where is the night parrot???

Greetings from Paraku. I’m here at the Species of the Desert Festival having a lovely time. We are 12 hours drive eastish from Broome on the shores of (currently empty) Lake Gregory (Paraku) near the community of Mulan. It is very in the middle.

This festival is a gathering of Indigenous rangers who live and work on country and also sometimes get together at events like this to share knowledge, do some organising and have a friendly chat. For a humble and very white cartoonist from rural Tasmania it is another world and I am feeling very lucky to be here and thoroughly enjoying myself – although the red dust gets into literally everything, even one’s undies (sorry TMI but it really does).

Workers have been fighting uranium mining for decades – the environment needs mass civil disobedience

What do Clive Palmer, Tony Abbott, Cory Bernardi, Barnaby Joyce, Mark Latham, Jim Molan, Craig Kelly, Eric Abetz and David Leyonhjelm have in common?

No doubt many answers will come to to mind. But whatever else unites them, they all support nuclear power.

Labour will back measures deterring investment in fossil fuels as part of a new drive to stop the financial sector from funding global heating, John McDonnell will reveal this week.

In the latest attempt by Labour to display its green credentials, the shadow chancellor will use a speech in the City on Monday to commit to using the “full might of the Treasury” to tackle the issue. He will commit the party to forcing the private sector into investing in the “green industrial revolution”.

Floating boom is designed to trap 1.8 trillion items of plastic without harming marine life – but broke apart last time

A floating device designed to catch plastic waste has been redeployed in a second attempt to clean up a huge island of garbage swirling in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii.

Boyan Slat, creator of the Ocean Cleanup project, announced on Twitter that a 600-metre (2,000-foot) long floating boom that broke apart late last year was sent back to the Great Pacific garbage patch this week after four months of repair.

As big global carmakers electrify their models, we ask experts about how things could shape up in Australia

Of all the bizarre sideshows on the 2019 federal election trail, the pantomime around electric cars had to be one of the strangest. Scott Morrison argued that Labor’s plan for 50% electric vehicles by 2030 would “ruin the weekend” and the Liberal party paid for Facebook ads claiming Labor would confiscate tradies’ Hilux utes.

Meanwhile, all the world’s big car manufacturers are busy getting on with electrifying their model ranges. But while things are changing, buying an EV is still a big leap. Guardian Australia spoke to experts about the options.

• Protesters block avenue between Port Authority and NYT
• Extinction Rebellion calls for better coverage of climate crisis

A climate change protest orchestrated by the Extinction Rebellion activist group briefly blocked Eighth Avenue in New York on Saturday afternoon, between the Port Authority transit hub and the home of the New York Times.

The New York police department (NYPD) said 70 people were arrested as they called for more effective media coverage of the dangers of climate change, in a dramatic demonstration that saw people stage a die-in in front of the newspaper building and disrupt traffic in midtown Manhattan.

Nation suffering disproportionately from climate emergency to phase in ban, believed to be world first, by December

It is but a tiny speck in the Pacific Ocean, but the island state of Vanuatu is leading the global fight against plastic waste. The nation, which has already introduced one of the toughest single-use plastic bans in the world, is believed to be the first to propose a ban on disposable nappies, to be phased in at the end of this year.

At a meeting in London this week, chaired by Patricia Scotland, the secretary general of the Commonwealth, Vanuatu was hailed as a “champion” nation, one of 12 who are forging ahead in tackling ocean and climate emergency challenges.

The mayor of Okuma, home of the damaged nuclear power plant, has been in exile for eight years – here he writes about finally returning

The residents of Okuma were among more than 150,000 people who were forced to flee their homes after the March 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. As one of the wrecked plant’s two host towns, Okuma was abandoned for eight years before authorities declared that radiation levels had fallen to safe levels, allowing residents to return. Even now, 60% of Okuma remains off limits, and only a tiny fraction of the pre-disaster population of 11,500 has returned since their former neighbourhoods were given the all clear in April. A month later, Okuma’s mayor, Toshitsuna Watanabe, and his colleagues returned to work at a new town hall. In his final diary for the Guardian, Watanabe reveals he has mixed feelings about being able to return to his family home.