Environment news

• Pennsylvania nuns oppose fracking gas pipeline through 'holy' land

  19-07-2017 18:31 via theguardian.com
  
  Catholic order builds chapel in middle of cornfield in attempt to use religious freedom protections to block Atlantic Sunrise pipelineCatholic nuns in Pennsylvania are resisting plans to build a $3bn pipeline for gas obtained by fracking through its land by creating a rudimentary chapel along the proposed route and launching a legal challenge, citing religious freedom.The Adorers of the Blood of Christ order has filed a complaint against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in a bid t
  
  Read more

• Europe heatwave live: ‘London is cooking,’ says UN chief as UK forecast to hit 38C; France has hottest night since records began

  23-06-2026 12:23 via theguardian.com
  António Guterres urges world to act on fossil fuels as continent braces for record-breaking heat; French PM to hold emergency meeting after heat deathsTell us: how is the heatwave in the UK and across Europe affecting you?Two children found dead in car in France as heatwave hits EuropeItaly’s health ministry has declared a red heatwave alert in 15 cities including Milan and Rome on Tuesday and said the number would go up to 16 on Wednesday.During a red alert – the highest leve
  
  Read more

• Europe heatwave live: UK temperatures forecast to reach 38C after overnight storms; France has hottest night since records began

  23-06-2026 11:26 via theguardian.com
  Temperatures could smash June record in England and Wales set in 1976; French PM to hold emergency meeting after heat deathsTell us: how is the heatwave in the UK and across Europe affecting you?Two children found dead in car in France as heatwave hits EuropeItaly’s health ministry has declared a red heatwave alert in 15 cities including Milan and Rome on Tuesday and said the number would go up to 16 on Wednesday.During a red alert – the highest level – the ministry advises peo
  
  Read more

• Goodbye, pilates princess – hello, gym goblin: how the just-got-out-of-bed look took over fitness

  23-06-2026 11:00 via theguardian.com
  The colour-coordinated ‘clean girl’ athleisure aesthetic is dead. Now it’s all about mismatched outfits and vintage sportswearAt first, the goblins came for our downtime. Going “goblin mode” was a lifestyle confined to the home – to the bed, mostly. The “comforts of depravity” it brought (“watching 90 Day Fiancé on mute while scrolling endlessly through social media, pouring the end of a bag of chips in your mouth”, for example)
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• ‘Climate change is a form of oppression’: the voices affected most by environmental crisis

  23-06-2026 11:00 via theguardian.com
  In HBO documentary The Welcome Table, director Josh Fox brings together people from across the world whose lives have been dramatically altered by the climate crisisIn an age of division, director Josh Fox is hoping to bring people of all kinds together. Specifically, he wants them to share a table – to break bread for a meal, and come together in exuberant song.In his new documentary film The Welcome Table, the director of the the Emmy-winning Gasland travels around the world to talk to p
  
  Read more

• Europe heatwave live: UK temperatures forecast to reach 38C; French PM to hold crisis meeting after heat deaths

  23-06-2026 09:21 via theguardian.com
  Temperatures could smash June record in England and Wales set in 1976; red alerts in France after 19 heat deathsTwo children found dead in car in France as heatwave hits EuropeHere are the UK temperature milestones that could be passed during the current heatwave, according to data published by the UK’s Met Office. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Ed Miliband to say UK must stick to net zero targets to deliver jobs and growth

  23-06-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  Energy secretary expected to argue that UK clean economy is booming as private sector pledges over £100bn of investmentEd Miliband is to say that the UK must stick to net zero targets to deliver jobs and growth, as speculation surrounds the energy secretary’s role under a new prime minister.He will make the speech as data shows more than £100bn in green investment has been pledged by private sector companies in this parliament. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Clean economy brings jobs and growth, says Miliband as £100bn invested in green energy

  23-06-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  Energy secretary hails £100bn milestone in this parliament and says it is ‘only the start of what we want to achieve’Ed Miliband has hailed a boost to UK jobs and growth as government data reveals that private sector companies have pledged more than £100bn in investment into the green economy so far in this parliament.Offshore wind, solar power and the electricity grid make up the bulk of the planned investment, most of it between 2024 and 2031, which will go to all regio
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Levitating penguins and predatory ants: Australian Geographic nature photographer of the year 2026 shortlist – in pictures

  23-06-2026 07:43 via theguardian.com
  A hundred incredible images have been shortlisted by the South Australian Museum as part of this year’s Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition. In its 23rd year, the competition attracted 2,129 entries from 501 photographers in 17 countries. Entries were accepted covering content from across the ANZANG bioregion – Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Remembering summer 1976: how the historic heatwave has become our new normal

  23-06-2026 07:01 via theguardian.com
  Half a century on, Britain braces for temperatures up to 40C as global heating brings yet more extreme weatherThe summer of 1976 is seared on to national memory as one of record heat. Harvests failed, farmers despaired, Britain imported an extra million tonnes of grain, food prices rose by 12%, taps ran dry, and each day, 250 people died from heat-related deaths.The heatwave, which began 50 years ago on Tuesday, brought 15 consecutive days where the peak temperature was above 32C. Half a century
  
  Read more

• Country diary: Birds of a feather in a noisy argument | Mary Montague

  23-06-2026 06:30 via theguardian.com
  Queen’s University, Belfast: The corvids in the branches above me spring a surprise – there’s a black crow among themThe rain hurries me to shelter at the woods’ edge, but I’m scarcely under the branches of a mature sycamore when the canopy starts to thrash. Abrasive voices erupt from the foliage as a rabble of crows dispute. One leaps into a gap between the leaves, crouching, its ash-grey body low over a branch and fanning its black tail. The throat inflates to bra
  
  Read more

• Piglet, it’s a purple, psychedelic shapeshifter! The wild new creature prowling Winnie-the-Pooh’s wood

  23-06-2026 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Is it an alien? A dinosaur? Is it going to kill us all? Our writer hits Ashdown Forest for the Big One Hundred celebrations – and finds its magic enchanting new generationsThe rolling idyll of heath and forest, spinney and stream that gave us the Heffalump, the Woozle and, most famously of all, Winnie-the-Pooh, has a new fantastical resident. Creeping through the bracken, making strange cooing and purring noises, is a shapeshifting creature with a huge tubular nose and eyes inspired by add
  
  Read more

• A thousand years old and 20 storeys high: tracking down Taiwan’s tallest trees

  23-06-2026 06:00 via theguardian.com
  The country’s biggest tree – named Heaven Sword of the Da’an River – is a carbon-storing behemoth hosting whole neighbourhoods of wildlife. But this and other giant trees are under threatThe higher you climb up the gigantic, millennia-old trees of Taiwan’s forests, the more layers of habitat and life emerge. On the forest floor, ferns thrive in the moist shade. Flying squirrels and owls sleep inside the hollow tree trunks. Yellow bell-shaped rhododendron flowers spr
  
  Read more

• Whyalla wipeout fears: cuttlefish usually gather in their thousands, but few have appeared since a massive algal bloom

  22-06-2026 17:10 via theguardian.com
  Divers have observed just a ‘couple of dozen’ of the cephalopods along the heritage-listed Cuttlefish Coast in South Australia, causing locals and marine scientists to worryFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastMid-June is usually the peak time for giant Australian cuttlefish to gather near Whyalla, in South Australia’s Spencer Gulf.Nearly every year, they come in their thousands – and sometimes hu
  
  Read more

• Trapped by floods and fearing death in the heat: the Australians taking legal action over the climate crisis

  22-06-2026 17:00 via theguardian.com
  Ten people affected in different ways by extreme weather are taking a case against the federal government to the UNGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAs flood waters rose in Brisbane’s West End in February 2022, Brendon Donohue was trapped alone in his second-storey apartment for 10 days. The 33-year-old is legally blind and his movement is limited by Peters plus syndrome. He received evacuation alerts on his phone in the middle of the night. But with the lift, inte
  
  Read more

• Met Office issues rare red weather warning for Wednesday and Thursday

  22-06-2026 14:58 via theguardian.com
  UK Health Security Agency also issues red heat alert for six English regions, indicating risk to life even for the healthyMet Office forecasters have issued a rare red weather warning for Wednesday and Thursday in the face of extreme heat and humidity, while a red heat health alert has been issued in England indicating “a risk to life for even the healthy population”.The weather warning covers southern Wales as far west as Swansea, and an area of England that includes London and runs
  
  Read more

• ‘Emotional and horrific’: volunteers ‘live’ as Somerset animals to study wildlife risks

  22-06-2026 14:14 via theguardian.com
  People trained to experience world as otters, salmon and other River Tone creatures for pioneering researchWhat does a kestrel make of the dog sniffing in the long grass below? Why does an exhausted salmon pause before a weir? How will an otter experience the rumble of a passing train?Eighteen people have spent six weeks swimming, slithering and soaring as otters, salmon, earthworms, red deer and kestrels in an attempt to better document the risks for wild animals in our human-dominated landscap
  
  Read more

• Starmer has a strong green record – but a rightwing backlash weakened his plans

  22-06-2026 13:19 via theguardian.com
  Prime minister was forced to row back on some policies despite strong support among voters for climate actionKeir Starmer has faced a problem no Labour government has needed to deal with before. His energy and climate policies – core to solving the cost of living crisis – have come under attack from opposition parties, which have made dismantling the agenda one of their top priorities, second only to immigration, in their pitch to voters.This is new in British politics, where a cross
  
  Read more

• Europe suffers under record heatwave as temperatures forecast to reach 44C

  22-06-2026 12:14 via theguardian.com
  Rail services, schools and sports events hit, with deaths of three elderly people in France partly blamed on intense heatWestern Europe is enduring a ferocious heatwave forecast to break temperature records, with half of France on red alert, rail services in Belgium disrupted and sports events in Spain and Germany cancelled or postponed.French authorities on Monday placed 49 of the country’s 96 mainland departments on a level 1 danger-to-life warning, urging 35 million people to exercise &
  
  Read more

• Woman finds rare pink grasshoppers in garden

  22-06-2026 07:14 via bbc.com
  
  Usually, they get eaten by birds due to their inability to camouflage, making them a rare sight.
  
  Read more

• Country diary: Somewhere in the vast forest is a miniature one | Amanda Thomson

  22-06-2026 06:30 via theguardian.com
  Abernethy forest, Cairngorms: One of my favourite species, the tiny twinflower, does better in Scots pinewoods than most places in the UK. Now I just have to find someThe soundtrack to my day is the calls of siskins, blackcaps, willow warblers, coal tits and tree pipits, the drumming of a great spotted woodpecker and an occasional cuckoo. But this morning my gaze is aimed downwards. I’m walking slowly, gingerly, looking for a colony of twinflowers that I know I’ve seen around here be
  
  Read more

• From mobile jungles to shadow art: how Dutch people try to beat the heat

  22-06-2026 06:00 via theguardian.com
  A national heatwave plan has been activated to help people stay cool during the Netherlands’ increasingly hot summersHouseholds in Amsterdam are being urged to hang their curtains outside their windows as health experts recommend simple hacks to moderate the heatwave rolling across the Netherlands, where homes were built for old-fashioned damp and coldish northern European weather.In a viral social media post last week, Eline Coolen, the heat coordinator at the city’s public health i
  
  Read more

• How India’s heatwaves are shutting schools – and pushing women out of the workforce

  22-06-2026 05:00 via theguardian.com
  Forced to stay home or switch jobs, working mothers are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis as classes go online for weeks or months at a timeOutside, the temperature has passed 41C (105.8F). Inside Sakshi Katyal’s city apartment, the air conditioner is blasting but it does little to relieve the stress of balancing housework and helping her five-year-old log in on a laptop to online classes. Her daughter’s school closed in May and Katyal is not clear when it will reopen. Probably
  
  Read more

• ‘We want a new Albania’: protests against Jared Kushner-backed resort turn anger on government

  22-06-2026 04:00 via theguardian.com
  Opposition to plans for ‘small paradise’ island of Sazan becomes wave of dissent against establishmentFor Ina Shkurti, like so many Albanians, the island of Sazan has played an outsized role. As a child she bathed in its “always calm and emerald green” waters, as a teenager it figured in her dreams and as an adult it was an indelible part of the memory and desire that drew her back, every summer, to Vlore, her home town across the sea.What Shkurti never imagined was that
  
  Read more

• Record-breaking heat expected across UK this week, says Met Office

  21-06-2026 17:04 via theguardian.com
  Health alerts are in place as very high humidity adds to danger of heat stress for the most vulnerableThe Met Office has expanded its extreme heat warning for the UK, predicting record-breaking highs of 38C (100.4F) this week.The Met Office forecasts that extremely high temperatures could last from Monday until Thursday, leading to health concerns for elderly and vulnerable people. The forecaster said there was “growing confidence” that this week may break the record for the hottest
  
  Read more

• El Niño is back with a vengeance – and fears of ‘Godzilla’ strength may be the least of our worries

  21-06-2026 15:00 via theguardian.com
  UN’s Word Food Programme and agriculture agency issue joint appeal for funds to avert global hunger crisis before it happensAdugna Woyessa was a little boy the first time drought tore his country apart. As harvests failed in rain-starved regions of Ethiopia in the early 1970s, and his school turned a classroom into a grain store for farmers to send aid, he had no idea that scientists were beginning to connect the force parching its fields with cyclical shifts in trade winds that had long s
  
  Read more

• More trees and nature spaces in council green plan

  21-06-2026 12:52 via bbc.com
  
  Bradford Council set out plans to increase tree canopy cover and create more nature reserves.
  
  Read more

• The tiny highway helping the capital's hedgehogs

  21-06-2026 09:10 via bbc.com
  
  A hedgehog highway is a network of small holes and gaps that allows hedgehogs to move freely.
  
  Read more

• How Europe’s EV makers shrank their product to challenge the bloated SUVs

  21-06-2026 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Smaller, cheaper cars built for narrow city streets are becoming more stylish – but require careful design decisionsThe winding backstreets of London, Paris and Rome are a large part of their charm. But they are also a problem for electric carmakers. For a long time, squeezing big batteries into smaller, cheaper cars to fit European streets was too much of a problem, so manufacturers focused on bloated SUVs instead.But that is finally changing. Battery technology has improved and Europe&rs
  
  Read more

• A spate of shark bites has Australian ocean lovers on edge. People want to know why they’re rising

  20-06-2026 22:00 via theguardian.com
  Warming ocean temperatures mean sharks are spending more time in high-population areas, yet shark net data shows no significant changes in numbersGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastRob Harcourt is heading back from a “beautiful surf” at Bondi on a warm and sunny winter’s morning in Sydney.But for him and many of his surfing mates, the compelling pull of the city’s world famous surf breaks has been neutered by tragedy, fear and uncertainty. Continue
  
  Read more

Follow @UK_Environment on Twitter!