The Guardian

Almost £9m to be spent to protect wet and temperate forests from invasive species

A project to restore an endangered section of the British countryside – the Celtic rainforest in rural Wales – has been launched with funding from the Welsh government and the EU.

Almost £9m is to be spent trying to protect and improve the wet and temperate forests typically dominated by sessile oak, downy birch, ash and hazel, in an areacriss-crossed by tumbling streams and waterfalls.

Air pollution leaves many Londoners like Catherine Bazell housebound, and as the severe impacts on health become clearer the call for greater action is rising

Catherine Bazell looks out from her first floor flat towards the familiar landmarks of central London as a steady stream of cars and vans trundle by on the road below.

“Me and my mum and dad used to love taking bus trips for the day when I was a girl,” says the 73-year-old. “We would get a bus and just go off exploring different bits of the city.”

Statewide assessment, which comes amid summer of extreme wildfires, warns of deadly cost if climate change is not stopped

California’s summer of deadly wildfires and dangerous heatwaves will soon be the new normal if nothing is done to stop climate change, a report released on Monday warns.

City heatwaves could lead to two to three times as many deaths by 2050, the report says. By 2100, without a reduction in emissions, the state could see a 77% increase in the average area burned by wildfires. The report also warns of erosion of up to 67% of its famous coastline, up to an 8.8F rise in average maximum temperatures, and billions of dollars in damages.

Impact of high levels of toxic air ‘is equivalent to having lost a year of education’

Air pollution causes a “huge” reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health.

The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person’s education.

Ex-president of the National Farmers’ Federation says politicians have failed ‘to do grunt work’ needed by members

The former president of the National Farmers’ Federation, Brent Finlay, has accused politicians of “jumping in front of the cameras” while shirking effective policy work on drought and climate change.

As Scott Morrison and his special drought envoy, Barnaby Joyce, toured south-west Queensland on Tuesday, Finlay described the former deputy prime minister and agriculture minister as the last in a long line of ministers who had “no real appetite” for national drought policy in a changing climate.

Windfarms fall short in heatwave, but 2018 was still UK’s second greenest summer

Britain’s long heatwave threw the country’s green energy revolution into reverse and pushed up carbon emissions this summer, leading experts to stress the need for a diverse energy mix.

The summer of 2017 was lauded as the “greenest ever” for electricity generation, thanks to a growing number of windfarms and solar installations edging out coal and gas power stations.

Some of the reporting of the climate impacts of the Dirty Power Plan has been inaccurate

Last October, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that the agency would repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. But because the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant and the Obama EPA correctly concluded that it poses a threat to public welfare via climate change, the EPA is legally obligated to do something to address that threat. That meant they needed a replacement plan.

Last week, the Trump EPA unveiled that plan and inaccurately named it the ‘Affordable Clean Energy Rule.’ The rule basically just extends the life of some dirty coal power plants and encourages them to run a bit more efficiently. The rule’s costs in worsening public health far exceed its monetary benefits. It would more accurately be named the ‘Expensive Dirty Power Plan.’

China is reconstructing nature alongside rapid urbanisation. Yan Wang Preston photographed the uprooted trees that have been moved to new cities

As the WA government pushes for world heritage listing of the sacred site, traditional owners warn of the threat of heavy industry, acid rain and graffiti

• Burrup peninsula rock art: Western Australia to seek world heritage listing
  

There is a Tasmanian devil on the northwest coast of Western Australia. He sits on a ridge looking back to the Dampier port, where the towers at the nearby liquid natural gas plant flare at dusk.

Another devil sits below him, also looking toward the port. On another ridge made of heaped volcanic rock sits a thylacine, the extinct Tasmanian tiger, the lines difficult to see in the harsh afternoon light. Both species have been extinct on the Australian mainland for more than 2,000 years, but the rocks remember.

Milestone reached nearly a year after China but ahead of the US

There are now more than a million electric cars in Europe after sales soared by more than 40% in the first half of the year, new figures reveal.

Europe hit the milestone nearly a year after China, which has a much larger car market, but ahead of the US, which is expected to reach the landmark later this year driven by the appetite for Tesla’s latest model.

City leaders across England and Wales have teamed up to demand that Theresa May take immediate action to fight air pollution, which scientists say causes at least 40,000 premature deaths a year in the UK.

A total of 17 mayors and civic leaders, representing 20 million people throughout the country, have signed a letter that calls for a national action plan to clean up the nation’s air to be implemented as a matter of urgency. They include the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, as well as mayors Andy Burnham (Greater Manchester), Steve Rotheram (Liverpool city region), and Dan Jarvis (Sheffield), along with leaders from authorities around the country including Cardiff, Leeds, Newcastle and Southampton.

Parts of drought-ravaged eastern Australia receive more rain in two days than in previous months combined

The drought has not broken, but farmers on parched properties across New South Wales and Queensland are seeing something they’ve not for many months: rain.

In Dubbo on the NSW Western Plains, farmer Glen Bloink could not contain his excitement at the first downpour in months.

Ministers consider doubling existing 5p levy and imposing it on even the smallest stores

Ministers have been considering rolling out the plastic bag levy to all shops and doubling it to 10p.

The prime minister was reportedly planning to announce the proposals next week as part of a series of measures designed to encourage the reuse of carrier bags and reduce the UK’s reliance on plastics, which are harmful to the environment.

Few records were broken in 1976, but that famous summer is still remembered as the longest and driest heatwave

It went down in meteorological, social and cultural history as the long, hot summer of 1976. For those of us who lived through it, the three-month drought and associated heatwave conjure up memories of endless summer days, with blue skies and glorious heat.

Oddly, perhaps, few temperature records were broken that year – August 1990 and 2003 recorded higher peak readings. One difference, though, was that some of the hottest days were in June and July: 35.6C in Southampton, on 28 June, was the highest ever recorded in the UK for the month of June, while the highest overall temperature in summer 1976 was 35.9C in Cheltenham, on 3 July.

Red avadavat birds, pink dolphins and a bamboo rat are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Use of mechanical device to pull kelp plants from beds would destroy local ecosystem, say campaigners

A proposal to mechanically dredge kelp forests off the coast of Scotland has led to an outcry from conservationists, who say it would destroy local ecosystems.

Ayr-based company Marine Biopolymers has approached Marine Scotland to apply for a licence to use a comb-like device that pulls entire kelp plants from the bed. In order to inform the environmental appraisal required by Marine Scotland, Marine Biopolymers has published a report describing the potential environmental impacts to be researched further for a full assessment.

It’s been a bumper summer for the omnivorous pests – wasp expert Ben Aldiss explains how to stop your picnic getting ruined

It’s proving to be a bumper year for wasps but if it wasn’t for the long, hot summer numbers would have been considerably below average.

Hibernating Queen wasps require cold, dry conditions to successfully endure their six-month hibernation, followed by a prolonged spell of warm, dry weather in spring as they construct their nests and rear their first workers. Instead, much of the country received record rainfall, followed by ice, snow and very low temperatures.

Permafrost ‘cement’ is evaporating, making rocks unstable and prone to collapse with many trails now deemed too dangerous to use

For the tourists thronging the streets and pavement cafes of Chamonix, the neck-craning view of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, is as dazzling as ever.

But the mountaineers who climb among the snowy peaks know that it is far from business as usual – due to a warming climate, the familiar landscape is rapidly changing.

Russian arms maker says cutting edge elements will ensure it can take on Elon Musk’s brand

The Russian arms maker Kalashnikov has unveiled its new electric car, inspired by a rare 1970s model, saying the technology will rival Elon Musk’s Tesla.

The brand, best known for the AK-47 machine gun, on Thursday presented the retro-looking pale blue prototype, the CV-1, at a defence expo outside Moscow.

Researchers from the Humane Society found 52 US locations in which giraffe products continue to be sold

The giraffe population has fallen by around 40% since 1990. There are now fewer than 100,000 giraffes alive in the world, and there are now fewer giraffes than elephants in Africa.

Yet in America, trade in giraffe parts is booming. A report by the Humane Society of the United States, released on Thursday, found that nearly 40,000 giraffe parts have been imported to the US over the past decade, the equivalent, they estimate, of nearly 4,000 individual giraffes.