Environment news

• Before you throw out all the synthetic fabrics in your closet, read this

  23-07-2026 18:00
  
  Experts weigh in on wellness culture’s obsession with natural fibers and the growing trend of people shunning plastic-based clothingA few months ago, Lane Koch made a decision: she would purge her family’s closets of all plastic-based fabrics and replace them with natural fibers, such as cotton and linen.Koch, a longtime Republican political strategist who was a senior staffer on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s presidential campaign, has long avoided processed foods and rid her kitchen o
  
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• Legal logging and soaring saplings: the ‘green islands’ bucking the deforestation trend in central America

  23-07-2026 12:00
  
  In Guatemala’s Maya biosphere reserve local people are making a living from trees at the same time as increasing forest cover, showing nature is best protected by those who depend on itThe low rumbling grows louder until a huge harvester crashes into the open, dragging a 15-metre trunk of mahogany in its wake. The tractor manoeuvres before releasing its load and shovelling it like a matchstick on to a growing pile of lumber at the edge of the clearing. Then, with a crunch of gears and a be
  
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• I am used to hot days now. But the warm wind has really panicked me | Adrian Chiles

  23-07-2026 12:00
  I first noticed it a couple of weeks ago on the streets of Cardiff – and it felt alarmingly wrongWhen the wind is warm, you know something is up. Naturally, I have been well aware of the awful reality of the climate crisis, but it has taken the warmth of the wind to really panic me. Not the endless 30C+ days, the desiccated garden, the tap slowing to a drip. No, it is the warm wind blowing on me. I can just about manage in punishing heat, even though it is particularly suffocating when the
  
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• Weatherwatch: How increased Arctic shipping affects cloud formation

  23-07-2026 07:00
  Shipping routes opened by climate change mean more industrial pollutants in the airThe gradual reduction in Arctic ice has started to open up new shipping routes, with marine traffic increasing by about 40% over the past 12 years. All these ships leave trails of pollutants in the air, which are already having a measurable climate effect.Aerosol particles in engine exhaust act as nuclei for water droplets, promoting cloud formation. Like aircraft, ships may leave contrails behind them in the sky.
  
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• Besieged by lobbyists, will UK ministers protect our ecosystems? No, they’ll chicken out | George Monbiot

  23-07-2026 07:00
  Industrial poultry farming is killing our rivers. But rather than stop it, the government has been facilitating it. Will Andy Burnham end this ecocide?There’s a slightly mean question I often ask British people with an interest in the living world: can you name the environment secretary? I don’t intend to show them up: it’s not them I’m testing. I watch the brows knit, a finger go up, the mouth open and close. “It’s, you know, the one who … no, they wen
  
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• Country diary: The eyebright paradox: a sunny healer and tiny parasitic thief | Paul Evans

  23-07-2026 06:30
  The Marches, Shropshire: Eyebrights are ancient herbs used to cure eye problems, but they also penetrate grass roots to siphon off water and nutrients A sight for sore eyes. Eyebrights flower in the short turf of Old Racecourse Common as sunlight burns a hole through rowan trees to cast sunset colours on the grass. The eyebrights are annuals with tiny flowers, 4mm-11mm long with a violet vibe, a white corolla with purple marks and a central flash of yellow.There are about 20 British ey
  
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• ‘People are scared their neighbours will call the police on them’: how the hosepipe ban got caught up in the culture wars

  23-07-2026 06:00
  While many people in the UK recognise the need to preserve water, others are furious and planning to flout the ban in their area. The target of their anger? Failing water companies and frighteningly thirsty datacentres‘Plants are like your babies,” says Harry. And accordingly, he argues, most people would do anything to keep them alive, including break the law. This is what he plans to do this week – defying a hosepipe ban in place across large parts of England, to ensure his s
  
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• Orcas seen ramming prey so hard it explodes may be playing game

  23-07-2026 06:00
  
  Scientists believe sunfish-smashing behaviour could be form of entertainment or to help younger whales feedOrcas have been observed ramming into giant fish so hard that the prey explode, possibly as a form of gory entertainment.On several occasions, orcas were observed to hold sunfish in their jaws while a second whale smashed into the target at high speed, causing it to break into thousands of pieces. Since the fish had already been killed, scientists suggested the behaviour may represent a for
  
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• Climate crisis-driven heat ‘sucking soils dry’ as extreme drought hits Europe

  23-07-2026 06:00
  
  Analysis shows how heatwaves are making atmosphere thirstier, damaging water supplies, food production and power generationExtreme heat supercharged by the climate crisis is sucking Europe dry in summer and intensifying the drought hitting the continent, a scientific analysis has found.Record-breaking heatwaves meant the hot atmosphere strongly evaporated water from rivers, lakes, soils and plants – conditions made 80 times more likely by global heating in western Europe and 40 times more
  
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