Environment news

• The Guardian view on adapting to the climate crisis: it demands political honesty about extreme weather | Editorial

  26-12-2025 18:30 via theguardian.com
  Over the holiday period, the Guardian leader column is looking ahead at the themes of 2026. Today we look at how the struggle to adapt to a dangerously warming world has become a test of global justiceThe record-breaking 252mph winds of Hurricane Melissa that devastated Caribbean islands at the end of October were made five times more likely by the climate crisis. Scorching wildfire weather in Spain and Portugal during the summer was made 40 times more likely, while June’s heatwave in Engl
  
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• Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing

  26-12-2025 18:00 via theguardian.com
  These fungi boost plant growth and restore depleted ecosystems, but federal funding for a library housing them has been cut – and it may be forced to closeInside a large greenhouse at the University of Kansas, Professor Liz Koziol and Dr Terra Lubin tend rows of sudan grass in individual plastic pots. The roots of each straggly plant harbor a specific strain of invisible soil fungus. The shelves of a nearby cold room are stacked high with thousands of plastic bags and vials containing fung
  
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• Four species, 160 days, 50,000 images: meet the photographer dedicated to showing the lovable side of flying foxes

  26-12-2025 15:00 via theguardian.com
  Doug Gimesy’s extreme close-ups of ‘sky puppies’ are designed to trigger an emotional response that endears people to the ‘wrongly vilified’ mammalsMore summer essentialsAfter standing chest-deep in the middle of the river for hours, the perfect belly dip was over in the bat of an eye.It was the moment photographer Doug Gimesy had been waiting for, standing in his sweaty waders on a stinking hot day, as he steadied kilos of camera equipment mere inches above the wat
  
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• From gifts that last to sustainable swaps, how we’re encouraging more thoughtful spending

  26-12-2025 14:00 via theguardian.com
  In this week’s newsletter: as we head into 2026, we’ll be testing products to help you cut waste and lighten your load on the planet• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereChristmas Day is almost a relief when it arrives, isn’t it? The season of consumption – from overindulging to buying far too many presents – can leave you, your wallet and your conscience feeling rather bloated. Most of us accept that the run-up to Christmas is wh
  
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• ‘Cocaine, gold and meat’: how Colombia’s Amazon became big business for crime networks

  26-12-2025 14:00 via theguardian.com
  Armed groups have moved in to the space left by the Farc after the civil war, cutting down rainforest to control land and build thousands of kilometres of smuggling routesHigh above the Colombian Amazon, Rodrigo Botero peers out of a small aircraft as the rainforest canopy unfolds below – an endless sea of green interrupted by stark, widening patches of brown. As director of the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS), he has spent years mapping the transformation of
  
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• Living on the edge: what young people in England told us about life on the coast

  26-12-2025 11:00 via theguardian.com
  As part of the Guardian’s Against the tide series, readers aged 18 to 30 share what they love about living in their coastal town, the challenges and why they often choose to leaveMegan, a 24-year-old from the Isle of Wight, is very familiar with saying goodbye. She decided university wasn’t for her and remembers how, one by one, she waved off her friends who left the island to study. Many never came back. Continue reading...
  
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• Year in wildlife – in pictures

  26-12-2025 09:00 via theguardian.com
  We look back over the year’s wildlife photographs, and hand out some much-deserved gongs to brilliant and beautiful creatures around the world Continue reading...
  
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• First of nine new river walks in England announced for north-west

  26-12-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Mersey Valley Way takes in Manchester and Stockport on its 13-mile route with other walks to be identified in 2026A new river walk has been announced by the government as ministers try to improve access to nature in England.The 13-mile (21km) walk will go through Greater Manchester and the north-west of England. There will be a river walk in each region of the country by the end of parliament, the government has pledged. Continue reading...
  
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• Sustainable aviation fuel take-up in UK unlikely to hit 2025 target, data suggests

  26-12-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Provisional figures in government mandate’s first year show 20% shortfall in levels of SAF supplied for UK flightsThe take-up of sustainable aviation fuels is on course to fall short of the UK government’s first annual mandate, official figures suggest.Production data published by the Department for Transport (DfT) covering most of 2025 shows that sustainable fuels (SAF) only accounted for 1.6% of fuel supplied for UK flights – 20% less fuel in volume than the 2% needed to fulf
  
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• Staying at home could leave you exposed to indoor air pollution, study reveals

  26-12-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Secondhand tobacco smoke and routine tasks such as operating the stove shown to be biggest emitters of indoor pollution in UK homesChristmas and New Year is a time when many people will be at home. Being indoors can give us a degree of protection from outdoor air pollution, but it can also trap pollution we produce inside our homes.Risks from secondhand tobacco smoke are well known and the effect is perhaps best seen by comparison of health data before and after indoor smoking bans. A study of 4
  
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• Country diary: Little rituals to help sparrows and wrens | Paul Evans

  26-12-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  The Marches, Shropshire: Boxing Day has its own more violent customs between humans and animals. That’s not the world I choose to live inThe sparrows are a shuffling, chirruping shadow in the bushes, a static of anticipation. They are waiting for food, calling for it. They have not forgotten what the poet Emily Dickinson describes, in her poem Victory Comes Late, as “God keeps his oath to sparrows, / Who of little love / Know how to starve!” However, sparrows do seem to live in
  
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• Feeling burnt out? A bush blessing for the end of the year | Jess Harwood

  26-12-2025 02:00 via theguardian.com
  Now is the time to think of new beginnings Continue reading...
  
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