The Guardian

Air quality assessment advises that occupants of Lewisham development should shut windows

A south London housing development has been approved in an area where air pollution is so high that residents will be advised to keep their windows closed.

Nitrogen dioxide exceeds legal limits on the busy road where the development is planned, next to the A2 in Lewisham. An air quality assessment carried out on behalf of the developers found levels of 56.3 micrograms per cubic metre in the area – far above the legal limit of 40µg/m3.

A study of coyote scat found the animals are attracted to fruit in urban gardens, where they’re also finding cats and small dogs

Doug McIntyre let his cat, Junior, out of the house on a sunny summer morning last June.

As Junior walked down the path and into the world, he paid special attention. “I had a funny feeling ... just an odd sensation that something was off,” McIntyre, a journalist and radio host, recalled in a column at the time.

Tens of thousands of young people in sites from London to Manchester and Brighton are demonstrating for climate action in the latest wave of strikes

10.48am BST

Sir David Attenborough has shown his support for the youth strikes in an interview with the Washington Post. He was asked about the young people who have been marching all over the world. The Post asked: when you look at that, what do you see, as someone generations ahead of them? Attenborough said:

I mean, strikes are a way of expressing a strong feeling that you have, but they don’t solve it. You don’t solve anything by striking. But you do change opinion, and you do change politicians’ opinions. And that’s why strikes are worthwhile.

10.38am BST

Students across the UK are striking to call for the government to act to tackle the climate change crisis. A further 30 countries across the globe are taking a stand. Below is a list of areas in the UK getting involved:

Transition to electric vehicles to cut carbon emissions has dominated climate policy debate in the Australian election campaign

One in two Australians would support shifting all sales of new cars to electric vehicles by 2025, according to polling by the Australia Institute.

The progressive thinktank surveyed a nationally representative sample 0f 1,536 Australians about their attitudes to electric vehicles. It found support was similar across all states and territories, including 52% in Victoria and Western Australia, 49% in Queensland and 48% in New South Wales.

Dozens of demonstrations due on Friday as report shows UK set to miss emissions targets

A fresh wave of youth strikes for climate action will hit towns and cities across the UK on Friday, as a government report revealed that the nation is set to miss its emissions targets.

More than 60 demonstrations involving tens of thousands of young people are expected from Parliament Square in London to sites in Leeds, Manchester and Brighton. They follow the global strike on 15 March, when more than 1 million young people across the world took action to demand rapid action to tackle the climate crisis.

Fossil fuel emissions are exceeding what natural systems can absorb, as year-on-year comparisons attest

Last Saturday the Guardian started publishing the carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement from Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Far from big sources, this is an indicator for the whole northern hemisphere. Each day you will see the numbers change a little. Over the last year they varied between 404 and 415 parts per million (ppm). They were lowest in late summer due to plant photosynthesis and greatest in spring from emissions that accumulated during the winter.

But compare year on year and you will see CO2 rising as emissions from our fossil fuel burning exceed what natural systems absorb. Globally, about 70% of CO2 emissions comes from cities. In leafy Egham, west of London, summer CO2 decreases by day due to plant photosynthesis and then plant respiration releases some of this at night. Along with emissions from fossil fuels, typical summer days show a variation of about 25ppm.

Federal opposition is building a case to review the approval of the mine’s groundwater management plan

Labor is building a case to review the approval of the Adani mine’s groundwater management plan, accusing the government of using the start of the election campaign to avoid scrutiny over whether environment minister Melissa Price’s decision was subject to interference.

Scott Morrison’s decision to call the election on Thursday cut short Senate estimates, which was due to examine Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation witnesses about scientific advice given before the approval.

Controversial coalmine still faces hurdles including seven plan approvals, court challenges and royalties negotiations

On Tuesday the government approved the groundwater plan for Adani’s Carmichael coalmine in central Queensland. It’s the latest development in the long fight over the mine proposals, which environmental campaigners have turned into a landmark decision on Australia’s climate change policies. Here’s what the latest decision means for the mine’s prospects.

Scott Morrison says ‘Bill Shorten can’t explain what his policies mean to Australians’, but car manufacturers are all moving towards electric vehicles

Hyundai Motor Group says it will sell every electric vehicle it brings to Australia and has “no fear” of the market changing in order to cut carbon pollution.

The carmaker has responded to the political commentary of recent days, which included the prime minister Scott Morrison claiming Labor’s electric vehicle target was a threat to Australians who like to drive SUVs.

Grants of up to £100,000 available to increase number of drop-off points and cut waste

A £1m fund to help expand and improve paper cup recycling facilities across the UK will be launched on Thursday by the coffee giant Starbucks and environmental charity Hubbub.

Local authorities, recycling companies and social enterprises will be invited to bid for grants of up to £100,000 on behalf of their communities to create at least 10 large-scale recycling programmes.

Equivalent of 11,000 new cases a day occur worldwide due to toxic air from traffic, researchers say

Four million children develop asthma every year as a result of air pollution from cars and trucks, equivalent to 11,000 new cases a day, a landmark study has found.

Most of the new cases occur in places where pollution levels are already below the World Health Organization limit, suggesting toxic air is even more harmful than thought.

Domain of Bees’ Needs campaign now used by site offering ‘independent escorts’

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has inadvertently been sending members of the public looking for advice on encouraging pollinators to a website advertising escort services.

The Bees’ Needs campaign, launched in 2014 by the then environment minister Lord de Mauley, called on the public to do more to help insect pollinators by growing more nectar-rich flowers, leaving patches of land to grow wild and cutting grass less often.

Senior officer in charge of review said he did not realise ‘the scale of work required’

Police chiefs have been criticised after they have repeatedly delayed completing an official review of the way they handle UK anti-fracking protests.

Senior officers promised to launch the review into tactics two years ago amid complaints that police had often used excessive force against campaigners who protested against fracking firms.

The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 forced the evacuation of nearby Pripyat, home to 45,000 people. David McMillan has journeyed there 21 times since to record abandoned homes and buildings as they are reclaimed by nature

Next generation must keep their own carbon levels at a fraction of their grandparents’ in order to prevent catastrophe

Children born today will have to live their lives with drastically smaller carbon footprints than their grandparents if climate change is to be controlled.

Fast, deep cuts in global emissions from energy, transport and food are needed to keep temperature rises in check and an analysis has shown this means the new generation will have lifetime carbon budgets almost 90% lower than someone born in 1950.

Small insects known as sweat bees were found after woman complained of a swollen eye

When a young Taiwanese woman named He took herself to a hospital this week complaining of a swollen eye, she expected to be treated for a simple infection.

Instead, the 29-year-old and her doctor were horrified to discover four bees living under her eyelids, feasting on her tears.

The misty páramos in the Andes that supply water to tens of millions of people are under threat. Now their mystery could be solved

In the land where the legend of El Dorado began, the race is on to solve the mystery of a vital 21st-century treasure – the water that tens of millions of people rely upon across northern South America. “It’s blue gold, and we are looking for it,” says Mauricio Diazgranados, a Colombian botanist.

The misty and marshy páramo landscapes that sit above the tree line and below the snow caps of the soaring Andes peaks are known as the living factories that ensure a steady flow of clean water to the region’s growing population.

If emissions continue to rise at current rate, ice will have all but disappeared from Europe’s Alpine valleys by end of century

Two-thirds of the ice in the glaciers of the Alps is doomed to melt by the end of the century as climate change forces up temperatures, a study has found.

Half of the ice in the mountain chain’s 4,000 glaciers will be gone by 2050 due to global warming already baked in by past emissions, the research shows. After that, even if carbon emissions have plummeted to zero, two-thirds of the ice will still have melted by 2100.

Exclusive: trustees reconsidering rules of investments to take account of climate change risk

Parliament’s pension fund trustees are to reconsider the rules of their investments to take account of the risk of climate change, in a first for MPs’ finances.

While stopping short of a promise to fully divest from fossil fuels, the pledge by the trustees marks an important first step towards assessing and reducing the effect of the pension fund’s investments – which are ultimately paid for by the taxpayer – on climate change.

The correlation of the feminine to nature, repressive for so long, can be a source of power

In the past few months I have started putting down roots. It’s a cliche but it’s literally what I’m doing. I spend my weekends transforming the tired old lawn into garden beds, layering woodchips, straw and horse shit I’ve shovelled from the paddocks next door into rich soil to grow my lettuces and kale. I have always loved gardening but now, more than ever, working with the earth has taken on an element of the spiritual.

As a teenager, like many suburban white girls, I got way into Wicca, that gentle, nature-centred neo-pagan religion beloved by would-be witches everywhere. Much later, in my early 20s, I revisited witchcraft, finding an unstructured feminine spirituality that helped me make sense of the world.