The Guardian

Mayor must do more to reduce car use and promote public transport, walking and cycling, says report

London mayor Sadiq Khan has been urged to do more to tackle the capital’s air pollution crisis by leading health experts and academics.

In a new report published on Tuesday, the group, including the chair of the NHS Sir Malcolm Grant, said the mayor must go further to reduce car use across the capital and harness new technology to create a system based around “public transport, walking and cycling”.

Entomologist names parasitoid wasp after ‘redeemed’ character Lucius Malfoy in hope of showing not all wasps are bad

A Harry Potter fan turned entomologist has named a wasp after a redeemed villain in the series in the hope of drawing attention to the much maligned insect.

Tom Saunders named and described a New Zealand parasitoid wasp as part of his masters study at Auckland University.

Chanctonbury Ring, West Sussex Jackdaws, ravens and hobbies dance in the sky, oblivious to tales of fairies and ghosts and ritual sacrifice

The morning sun shines through the canopy of the wood at the bottom of the hill, making the fallen leaves on the ground glow rust-red. The steep chalk and grey mud track is greasy from last night’s rain. Either side, flocks of tits – blue, great, coal and long-tailed – flit about, and wrens heckle my laboured climb with loud alarm calls.

At the top of the hill, the strong, cold wind is shaking the trees, some already stripped skeletal-bare. Emerging into the open, I turn on to the South Downs Way and follow the path through a gate, over a cattle grid. The soft contour of the hilltop sweeps up to the early iron age fort, hidden by a cap of dark trees.

British Antarctic Survey researchers will study area opened up by loss of iceberg A68, which has been hidden for up to 120,000 years

A team of scientists is planning an expedition to examine the marine ecosystem revealed when an enormous iceberg broke off the Larsen C ice shelf earlier this year.

In July, the iceberg known as A68 broke off the shelf, leaving the area at its lowest recorded extent. Researchers are now hoping the event may lead to novel revelations from their investigations of the area opened up, which had been hidden under ice for up to 120,000 years.

Exclusive: Company pledges products will be free from ingredients tainted with controversial herbicide after survey found traces in its European ice-creams

Ben & Jerry’s has moved to cut all glyphosate-tainted ingredients from its production chain and introduce an “organic dairy” line next year, after a new survey found widespread traces of the controversial substance in its European ice-creams.

The dramatic initiative follows a new survey by Health Research Institute (HRI) laboratories which found traces of the weedkiller in 13 out of 14 B&J tubs sampled in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

• Scott Pruitt says he will sign rule withdrawing policy on Tuesday
• Plan imposed restrictions on emissions from coal-fired power stations

The Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, confirmed on Monday that the Trump administration will abandon the Obama-era clean power plan aimed at reducing global warming.

Related: Trump EPA plan will roll back Obama standards on power plant emissions

New EU rules that allow car firms to keep their emissions control systems secret from the public risk another dieselgate and should be made illegal, say environmental lawyers

New EU rules that allow car manufacturers to keep pollution control systems secret from the public should be declared illegal, according to environmental lawyers.

The systems can legally cut emissions controls under certain conditions on the road, meaning more pollution is produced. But keeping these strategies secret risks another “dieselgate” scandal, according to ClientEarth lawyers, who announced on Monday that they are seeking to challenge the regulation in the European Union’s court of justice.

Facility run by E.ON, to be followed by many more, will help UK grid cope with fast-growing amount of renewable energy

One of the first of a new fleet of industrial-scale battery plants will come online in Sheffield this week to help the grid cope with the rapidly-growing amount of renewable power.

E.ON said the facility, which is next to an existing power plant and has the equivalent capacity of half a million phone batteries, marked a milestone in its efforts to develop storage for power from wind farms, nuclear reactors and gas power stations.

Coal can no longer compete in the free market, so the Trump administration wants to prop it up with taxpayer subsidies

The conservative philosophy of allowing an unregulated free market to operate unfettered often seems to fall by the wayside when the Republican Party’s industry allies are failing to compete in the marketplace. Trump’s Energy Secretary Rick Perry recently provided a stark example of this philosophical flexibility when he proposed to effectively pull the failing coal industry out of the marketplace and instead prop it up with taxpayer-funded subsidies.

This meditative little book isn’t new: it came out first in 2003, when it was published by a small farming press. But then a beady-eyed editor at Faber noticed Alan Bennett had praised it in his diary (“it alters the way one looks at the world”, he wrote in an entry on 24 August 2006), with the result that it has now been republished. Its author, Rosamund Young, who lives and works at Kite’s Nest, an organic farm on the edge of the Cotswold escarpment, must be thrilled – or maybe not. Having read her book, which is very sensible but also somewhat dreamy and a bit obsessive, she strikes me as the kind of woman who would rather be standing in a muddy field in her wellies than listening to some eager townie praise her for her wisdom.

Young’s parents began farming in 1953, when she was 12 days old and her brother (with whom she and her husband still run Kite’s Nest) was nearly three; she continues their tradition of treating animals as individuals with varied personalities, rather than as identical members of herds. The Secret Life of Cows, then, is essentially a collection of anecdotes about the many beasts she has hand-reared down the years: bovines, mostly, though there are a few stories about sheep and chickens, too. In a way, it’s like a book for children. Every animal has a name – Araminta, Black Hat, Dorothy – not to mention parents, brothers and sisters. Most have adventures, albeit not massively exciting ones; Young refers casually to their “conversations”, as if cows chat just like humans. After a while, though, you get used to all this, and as a consequence the world does indeed tilt. Or bits of it, at least. This book will change forever the way you see a field of ayrshires or friesians.

Our readers on their most cherished cycling routes, from remote Scottish islands to Japanese mountain ranges

Dolebury Warren, Somerset In an iron age hill fort once ruled by rabbits, waxcaps speckle the ground with luminous colour

This shapely hill has steep sides, the sheep-walked turf trodden into neat pleats along the contours. On the ridge, upstanding stony ribs encircle a heart of deeper soil – the iron age hill fort, the Dolebury. In medieval times, when rabbits were tender creatures, a protective warren was built up here, completing the modern name for the place. Nowadays the rabbits look after themselves and the place is often deserted, especially on a ditchwater-dull day like this.

We had come to hunt waxcaps, glistening mushrooms in parrot shades of red, orange, yellow and green. In this peaceful soil their mycelium spreads undisturbed beneath thyme and tormentil (Potentilla erecta). We have been here before, quartering their favourite corners, luckless, only to look back and see them hiding behind a tussock, shining as brightly as lights on a Christmas tree.

A short film shot by  Heath Patterson captures photographer Vaughan Brookfield and Tom Lynch's journey to a New Zealand glacier equipped with hundreds of kilograms of gear and a light projector. Their plan was to project images on to the rapidly receding Tasman Glacier. Brookfield says: 'We want to remind people of the effects humans are having on the environment' 

With pressure to boost recycling and cut costs, landfill waste in England is collected less frequently – with six councils collecting it once in three weeks

More than three quarters of English councils now pick up household rubbish which cannot be recycled or composted just once a fortnight, a survey reveals.

With councils under pressure to boost recycling and cut costs, some have gone further, with six local authorities picking up residual household waste only once every three weeks.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 13 October 1917

Surrey, October 11
This morning was chill. Wild duck were on a broad stretch of backwater which has come from the river overflow in the low marsh; they floated like toy birds in the early haze. After a while they flew, skimming the ripples closely enough to make scattered particles shimmer in the rising sun, their green-grey and chestnut plumage throwing out a show of different colours in the flight. They settled among the tall reeds along the river bank, with lapwing playing overhead, then came out to rest for a long time on the water again. Mist was still white along the hedgerow, frosting haws and the now crimson “winter pears” on wild rose bushes, which are rich in yellow leaf. Up in the spinney a greenfinch went from bough to bough of a thorn, high and low, his feathers now dull in shade, now almost the colour of young lime leaves where the sun struck through. Alighting on a branch, the sound of a long, sweet note satisfied the ear, then, as his wings just opened, a faint twitter was hardly heard. Flying off a little, he always came back to the spreading thorn again.

Related: How to access the Guardian and Observer digital archive

It is no surprise the mayor of London wants to ban wood burning: even new stoves are much more polluting than the exhaust of a heavy goods vehicle

Browse through the home style magazines in your newsagent’s or watch Channel 4’s Grand Designs and you will see beautifully decorated living rooms complete with a roaring fire. Wood burning has become very fashionable and, let’s face it, a log fire is cosy.

Natural gas central heating largely banished solid fuel and brought huge improvements in our urban air. For two decades the UK’s official energy statistics said that home wood burning was too small to be quantified, but under the radar it has been making a return. A 2016 government survey found that 7.5% of UK homes burned wood making up 30% of UK particle emissions. In London, one home in 12 burns wood, but this accounts for more than a quarter of the particle pollution produced in the capital. It is no surprise that the mayor of London, Sadiq Kahn, has called for powers to address this problem.

Birds reproduce only on three remote islands in Bass Straight and are listed as ‘vulnerable’ with just 1,500 breeding pairs remaining

The Tasmanian shy albatross has embraced the idea of settling down in an artificial, specially constructed nest, according to scientists who are trying to boost the population of the endangered seabird.

A trial of the nests was announced in June to help the breeding success of the endangered species, which biologists believe are vulnerable to the environmental effects of climate change.

The black market’s insatiable demand for ivory has turned poachers’ attention away from well-protected elephants to more vulnerable hippos

It seems almost incomprehensible that the desire for an ivory ornament or piece of jewellery justifies the slaughter of a majestic elephant, but as their populations continue to crash, the ever-hungry black market has become creative in order to satisfy its greed. Now, ivory hunters are setting their sights on everything from arctic narwhals to fossil mammoths. But one unexpected victim of this barbaric practice is the humble hippopotamus. A new study says that a rise in demand for hippos’ teeth is threatening the mammal with extinction.

In many ways, it takes a lot of effort to kill an elephant. They are legally well protected in most countries where they range and international regulations are clear. Also, smuggling large tusks internationally is highly conspicuous. Hippos offer a cheaper and, in many ways, “easier” ivory option. The simple truth is that they are not high on the priority list of the international conservation community. Find a group of wild-living African elephants and, often, they will either be tracked with radio collars or will be the focus of long-term conservation research, intensive ecotourism or determined law-enforcement efforts. Not so with hippos. Unlike their famous savannah cousins, they don’t come with a protective human entourage, meaning poachers can take their time. Additionally, they are not protected especially well at either a national or international level.

A competition, now in its 43rd year, dedicated to showcasing the beautiful and bizarre as seen under a light microscope attracted over 2,000 entries from 88 countries. Here’s a selection of the winning and commended images from the 2017 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition

It’s time the responsibility for recycling was laid firmly at the door of the packaging manufacturers

Litter brings out an urge in me to ban everything. Under my regime, straws would be outlawed. Plastic drinks bottles – only 57% of which find their way into recycling – would be verboten. But top of the list of banned items would be wacky recycling surveys.

The latest, from Business Waste, highlights the craziest eco blunders found in the nation’s recycling bins. The list includes a car door, 1,000 Greenpeace badges (oh, the irony!) and a full Christmas dinner including plates, tablecloth, crackers and pudding.