Environment news

• ‘These trees may not survive’: Jordan’s ancient olive harvest wilts under record-breaking heat

  01-01-2026 16:00 via theguardian.com
  Extreme heat and drought has destroyed 70% of Jordan’s olive crop, endangering livelihoods of 80,000 families and a centuries-old traditionAbu Khaled al-Zoubi, 67, walks slowly through his orchard in Irbid, northern Jordan, his footsteps kicking up dust from the parched earth beneath centuries-old olive trees. He stops at a gnarled trunk, its bark split and peeling from months of unrelenting heat.He points out that the branches should be sagging under the weight of ripening fruit, but inst
  
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• ‘The source of all life is here’: plan to mine lithium in Chilean salt flat sparks fears of water scarcity

  01-01-2026 15:00 via theguardian.com
  The Colla Indigenous people claim Rio Tinto’s plans to extract the key mineral will harm fragile ecosystems and livelihoodsMiriam Rivera Bordones tends her goats in a dusty paddock in the russet mountains of Chile’s Atacama desert. She also keeps chickens and has planted quince and peach trees and grapevines, which are watered by a stream winding down the hills towards the Indigenous community of Copiapó.But now the huge British-Australian mining multinational Rio Tinto has si
  
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• From rent to utility bills: the politicians and advocates making climate policy part of the affordability agenda

  01-01-2026 13:30 via theguardian.com
  As the Trump administration derides climate policy as a ‘scam’, emissions-cutting measures are gaining popularityA group of progressive politicians and advocates are reframing emissions-cutting measures as a form of economic populism as the Trump administration derides climate policy as a “scam” and fails to deliver on promises to tame energy costs and inflation.Climate politics were once cast as a test of moral resolve, calling on Americans to accept higher costs to aver
  
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• Often brutal, always beautiful: the sea hounds of the Frisian Islands – in pictures

  01-01-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  For 10 years, the scientist and photographer Jeroen Hoekendijk has been observing pinnipeds (seals, sea lions and walruses) on the fragile North Sea archipelago stretching along the Dutch, German and Danish coastline. A remainder of the now-drowned Doggerland, left behind after the ice age, the low-lying islands are an advance warning sign of the warming and rising seas of the climate crisisPhotographs by Jeroen Hoekendijk, text by Philip Hoare Continue reading...
  
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• Country diary: A novel way to farm this ‘black desert’ | Sara Hudston

  01-01-2026 06:30 via theguardian.com
  Greinton, Somerset Levels: Instead of drying the peat to make it fit for agriculture, a small group of farmers have decided to work with the wetIt looks like nothing more than a few soggy acres of bulrush, brown and broken, edged by a striding line of electricity pylons. But this modest patch of reeds and weeds is at the forefront of a novel farming method that upends ideas about how to manage some of our wettest landscapes.For centuries people have worked to drain the Somerset Levels, tran
  
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• EU’s new ‘green tariff’ rules on high-carbon goods come into force

  01-01-2026 06:00 via theguardian.com
  The ‘border adjustment mechanism’ aims to create a level playing field while also encouraging decarbonisationThe biggest shake-up of green trade rules for decades comes into force today, as companies selling steel, cement and other high-carbon goods into the EU will have to prove they comply with low-carbon regulations or face fines.But a lack of clarity on how the rules will be applied, and the failure of the UK government to strike a deal with Brussels over the issue, could lead to
  
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• Intriguing finds could solve mystery of women in medieval cemetery

  01-01-2026 01:34 via bbc.com
  There is growing evidence that the women were part of an early female religious community.
  
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