Environment news

• Kent water failure was foreseen and could have been stopped, regulator says

  06-01-2026 15:48 via theguardian.com
  Problem at water treatment centre left 24,000 Tunbridge Wells homes without drinking water for two weeksA failure at a water treatment centre that left tens of thousands of Kent households without water was foreseen weeks before it happened and could have been stopped, the regulator has said.Twenty-four thousand homes in the Tunbridge Wells area were without drinking water for two weeks from 30 November last year due to a failure at the Pembury water treatment centre. Continue reading...
  
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• Trump taking ‘drill, baby, drill’ plan to Venezuela ‘terrible’ for climate, experts warn

  06-01-2026 14:00 via theguardian.com
  ‘Everybody loses’ if production supercharged in country with largest known oil reserves, critics sayDonald Trump, by dramatically seizing Nicolás Maduro and claiming dominion over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, has taken his “drill, baby, drill” mantra global. Achieving the president’s dream of supercharging the country’s oil production would be financially challenging – and if fulfilled, would be “terrible for the climate”, expe
  
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• We can safely experiment on reflecting sunlight away from Earth. Here’s how | Dakota Gruener and Daniele Visioni

  06-01-2026 13:00 via theguardian.com
  Reflecting a small fraction of incoming sunlight to reduce global heating is not a new idea. It is time to safely experimentThe world is warming fast – and our options to avoid catastrophic harm are narrowing. 2024 was the first full year more than 1.5C hotter than the 19th-century average. Emissions are still rising, with fossil fuel use expected to hit a new high in 2025. Permanent carbon removal technologies – often cited as a fix – are removing just tens of thousands of ton
  
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• Electric car discounts are unsustainable, says industry group

  06-01-2026 10:48 via bbc.com
  The SMMT warned of a growing gap between consumer demand and the government's ambitions for EVs.
  
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• Violence, death and stolen land: people need to know the true cost of an avocado | Claudia Ignacio Álvarez

  06-01-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Behind the west’s huge appetite for the fruit lies the dark reality of environmental destruction and Indigenous exploitation in MexicoI grew up in San Andrés Tziróndaro, a Purépecha community on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacán. My childhood was shaped by water, forests and music. The lake fed us. The forest protected us. In the afternoons, people gathered in the local square while bands passed through playing pirekua, our tr
  
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• How Christmas trees are getting a new lease of life

  06-01-2026 07:04 via bbc.com
  Some businesses are helping to recycle and reuse trees in a bid to reduce landfill and emissions.
  
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• Country diary: Twelfth night tugs at the heart, but these decorations must come down | Nicola Chester

  06-01-2026 06:30 via theguardian.com
  Inkpen, Berkshire: The felted mouse choir, the bejewelled owl … a lot of it has meaning to us. At least the greenery goes up in a blaze of gloryBy the time you read this, we’ll be taking down the Christmas decorations. I don’t like to let them go. I love the mischief of the days and nights over Christmastide. They sit outside ordinary time, disappearing and extending of their own accord. I enjoy the historical ambiguity over when Twelfth Night falls: the 5th, or this night? I
  
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• ‘Mad fishing’: the super-size fleet of squid catchers plundering the high seas

  06-01-2026 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Every year a Chinese-dominated flotilla big enough to be seen from space pillages the rich marine life on Mile 201, a largely ungoverned part of the South Atlantic off ArgentinaIn a monitoring room in Buenos Aires, a dozen members of the Argentinian coast guard watch giant industrial-fishing ships moving in real time across a set of screens. “Every year, for five or six months, the foreign fleet comes from across the Indian Ocean, from Asian countries, and from the North Atlantic,” s
  
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• Hard to digest: we still live in Fast Food Nation | Eric Schlosser

  06-01-2026 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Twenty-five years after I revealed the practices of the industrial food giants, the profits – and dangers – of mass producing meat and milk have only grownCats have long been kept at American dairy farms to kill rats, mice and other rodents. In March 2024, a number of barn cats at dairies in the Texas panhandle started to behave strangely. It was like the opening scene of a horror movie. The cats began to walk in circles obsessively. They became listless and depressed, lost their bal
  
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