Environment news

• Charlotte O’Dwyer became the face of black summer’s terrible toll. Five years after the fires her family looks back

  09-02-2025 20:00
  On this day in 2020 the worst of the massive bushfires finally went out – but Australia had little time to grieve as the Covid pandemic took hold. Five years on, we examine the wounds of that summerGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Continue reading...
  
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• Air pollution causing 1,100 cases a year of main form of lung cancer in UK

  09-02-2025 14:56
  
  Exclusive: Health experts and cancer charities say findings should serve as wake-up call to ministersMore than 1,100 people a year in the UK are developing the most prevalent form of lung cancer as a result of air pollution, the Guardian can reveal.Exposure to toxic air was attributed to 515 men and 590 women in the UK in 2022 getting adenocarcinoma – now the most dominant of the four main subtypes of lung cancer – an analysis by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency fo
  
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• Air traffic control to Sir Keir: turbulence ahead | Stewart Lee

  09-02-2025 11:00
  There’s no point trying to make plans around the whims of Trump. The PM instead needs to turn to EuropeTo Elon Musk, I say this! To perform one Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, might be considered a misfortune. To perform two Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, begins to look like carelessness.I didn’t write that joke. I h
  
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• Promoting green growth does not make you an ‘eco-nutter’. It’s the only way forward

  09-02-2025 10:00
  
  Heading off the environmental crisis and growing the economy are not at odds. They are two sides of a coin – as our politicians should realiseIf you care about the world we are handing on to future generations, the news on Thursday morning was dramatic. This January was the warmest on record; temperatures in 18 of the past 19 months have exceeded pre-industrial averages by 1.5C. There can be no comfort that the epoch-changing climate crisis is 20 or even 10 years away. It is already upon u
  
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• ‘It’s about escaping from yourself’: wildlife presenter Gordon Buchanan

  09-02-2025 10:00
  Gordon Buchanan has spent years observing the wild world as one of Scotland’s most respected nature cameramen and presenters. Now he’s turned his focus closer to home. He opens upabout his adventurous childhood and what animals have taught him about living wellGordon Buchanan is what’s called a super- recogniser. That means the 52-year-old wildlife presenter and cameraman from Scotland has a near-unfathomable recall of faces he has seen only fleetingly. In tests at the Universi
  
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• Nimbys. Naysayers. Traitors. Children take note, why learn oracy when insults will do? | Catherine Bennett

  09-02-2025 08:00
  
  Keir Starmer’s rhetoric against green campaigners appears to have taken a playground turn Before the last election, in what was billed as his “most personal interview yet”, Keir Starmer said: “I’m not in the habit of bandying insults around”. It was once part of his appeal, or meant to be, that his speech was polite, even to the point of colourless, in contrast to the ugly gibberish streaming out of Boris Johnson, then Liz Truss. When the Tories went low,
  
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• Keir Starmer urged to resist pressure to permit Rosebank North Sea oilfield

  09-02-2025 08:00
  
  Leading climate group warns of damage to green agenda if giant project goes aheadKeir Starmer will do huge damage to the global fight against climate change if he gives in to political pressure and allows the development of a giant new oilfield in the North Sea, according to an analysis by the country’s leading environmental institute.Chaired by Nicholas Stern, the Grantham Institute on Climate Change will fire a warning shot to ministers not to give the green light to the Rosebank and Jac
  
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• Victoria’s Halls Gap survived the flames – but as tourists stay away, the dark clouds remain

  09-02-2025 00:00
  
  Resilience is wearing thin in the town, as business owners face mass booking cancellations and insurers turn their backsGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThe tourist road from Dunkeld to Halls Gap is eerily quiet. Blackened trees stretch spidery branches towards a sky still smudged with smoke. The road is open, but few cars take it save for a wildlife rescue vehicle inching slowly along, its occupants scanning the burnt-out forest for limping wallabies reported in the ar
  
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• I live in a forest my parents planted when I was a child. It’s not too late for you to grow one too | Jessie Cole

  09-02-2025 00:00
  
  Sometimes a branch grows so low and bushy that it blocks access to my room. I diligently cut it backMore summer essentialsIn the late 1970s when my parents built the house I still live in, there was no forest. The property was a disused cow pasture, full of scrappy grass and weeds. My parents began planting trees before they began the house build, and now – in my lifespan, 47 years – it has grown into a forest. When I was a child, we called my parent’s plantings “the gard
  
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