Environment news

• Regular spaceplane flights planned in project

  27-10-2026 14:11 via BBC News
  
  Spaceplanes could take off on regular flights from Cornwall following an agreement.
  
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• Autumn colours around the world – in pictures

  07-11-2026 09:30 via Environment | The Guardian
  The seasonal transformation offers the chance to enjoy warm, golden colours before winter Continue reading...
  
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• UK dairy farmers face further pressure as milk processor cuts prices

  06-11-2026 17:27 via Environment | The Guardian
  Freshways lowers price paid to producers by 7p a litre, prompting warnings confidence in the sector is ‘at rock bottom’“Milk is leaving the farm at a loss,” says dairy farmer Ian Harvey, as he warns confidence in the sector is “at rock bottom”.Most of the UK’s dairy producers were already being paid less for their milk than it costs to produce it after a year of volatile farmgate milk prices, combined with the impact of the summer’s drought and soaring costs of vital fuel and fer
  
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• In Alaska’s capital, food comes by water, air or, most often, community sharing

  06-11-2026 16:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Juneau has little arable land, a short growing season and few farmers – and deep traditions of residents and the land feeding each otherForty miles north-west of Alaska’s capital, the highway just ends.At Glacier Highway’s most northern point, the pavement turns to gravel, the gravel widens into a turnaround and the tire tracks curve back the way they came. At the far end, the woods begin, a narrow hiking trail slipping toward the southern end of Berners Bay. Continue reading...
  
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• Australia’s coal and gas approvals are starting to stink ahead of Cop31 | Jess Harwood

  06-11-2026 15:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  What happened to climate injustice?Continue reading...
  
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• Most Europeans want action to tackle climate crisis but not at any cost, poll shows

  06-11-2026 13:27 via Environment | The Guardian
  
  YouGov survey finds support for tree planting and emissions taxes but opposition to air travel and fuel leviesEurope live – latest updatesEuropeans believe human-made climate change is real, a survey has shown, with most feeling action must be taken soon – as long as they do not have to sacrifice too much to achieve it.The YouGov poll of six European countries showed between 69% (Germany) and 80% (France) of respondents believed the climate was changing, with few (1%-4%) denying it and 14-20
  
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• Week in wildlife: an autumnal deer, golden jackals and an oily-kneed beetle

  06-11-2026 09:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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• Cop31 will expose the conflicts and contradictions of the world’s fossil fuel reliance

  06-11-2026 08:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  The move to clean electricity will form the focus of the climate summit, which begins next week in coal-obsessed Turkey. The outlook doesn’t look good• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereHolding a climate conference under the presidency of one coal-obsessed country might be regarded as a misfortune for the planet – sharing it between two starts to look provocative. But at this year’s Cop31 UN climate summit in Antalya, coal exporter Australia and coal consumer
  
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• Delhi braces for ‘pollution season’ as smog shrouds India’s capital – in pictures

  06-11-2026 07:41 via Environment | The Guardian
  The air quality index in Delhi has already soared above 650, more than 30 times the limit the World Health Organization deems to be safe Continue reading...
  
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• Country diary: This could be a case of mistaken rodentity | Nic Wilson

  06-11-2026 06:30 via Environment | The Guardian
  Clophill Lakes, Bedfordshire: Bank vole or wood mouse? On a series of nine-second videos, they’re not so easy to tell apartBank vole or wood mouse? That is the question. I’m working my way through a series of nine-second videos from Clophill Lakes nature reserve, taking notes on how many bank voles appear in the clips. Unfortunately, I can’t tell my voles from my mice.The footage begins at 4.47pm, when wildlife volunteer Stephen Plummer switches on the trail camera in his mostela trap: a
  
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• How Democrats used the midterms to turn affordability concerns into ‘green populism’

  05-11-2026 18:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  From energy prices to datacenters, climate became a cost-of-living issue – and a winning oneClimate-forward Democrats swept into power on Tuesday night as a blue tsunami flipped the Senate, House and several governor’s races. Voters were laser-focused on affordability, and experts said Democrats succeeded in linking cost-of-living concerns with rising energy prices, datacenters and, to some extent, the climate crisis. They may have even created a path for a “new climate politics”.The res
  
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• ‘It’s kind of a melting pot’: how one US city transformed a highway into a leafy oasis

  05-11-2026 15:07 via Environment | The Guardian
  The BLVD is home to 250 enterprises, from banks, tattoo shops and restaurants to museums and a performing arts centrePassing through the Mojave desert on State Route 14, going by landscapes Hollywood uses to represent alien planets, a driver might not expect to find a walkable, tree-lined boulevard.
  But there are nine beautiful, leafy blocks on West Lancaster Boulevard, a piece of what used to be Highway 14. They were redeveloped as part of a mixed-use urban streetscape in the city of Lancaster,
  
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• South West Water’s failure to fix leaks ‘putting customer supplies at risk’

  05-11-2026 11:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  With parts of region served by company in severe drought still, regulators give it six weeks to come up with action planRepeated failures by South West Water to tackle leaks are putting customers at higher risks of losing water supplies as parts of the region remain in severe drought, regulators have said.In a warning to the privatised company that serves 1.8 million people across the south-west of England, the regulators said it had been failing to meet targets to reduce leaks and repair burst
  
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• ‘No one cares about the little guy’: Sri Lanka’s fishers still reeling from 2021 toxic plastic spill

  05-11-2026 11:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  A stricken container ship shed tonnes of tiny pellets called nurdles on the west coast. Five years on, locals are counting the cost to marine life and livelihoodsOn the beach in Pamunugama, on Sri Lanka’s west coast, women in uniform work under the scorching sun. They sift through rubbish washed ashore, searching among the usual litter for something much smaller: tiny plastic pellets.Five years ago, in May 2021, this same beach was swamped with pellets as smoke rose over the Indian Ocean. Cont
  
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• ‘No one cares about the little guy’: plastic nurdles still washing ashore in Sri Lanka five years after toxic spill

  05-11-2026 11:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  A stricken container ship shed tonnes of the tiny pellets on the west coast in May 2021. Today, locals are counting the cost to marine life and livelihoodsOn the beach in Pamunugama, on Sri Lanka’s west coast, women in uniform work under the scorching sun. They sift through rubbish washed ashore, searching among the usual litter for something much smaller: tiny plastic pellets.Five years ago, in May 2021, this same beach was swamped with pellets as smoke rose over the Indian Ocean. Continue re
  
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• Warming UK seas could ‘fundamentally reshape marine ecosystems’ – report

  05-11-2026 08:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Four-year study warns destabilised marine food webs could jeopardise food security by 2050Warming seas around the UK and the wider north-east Atlantic could destabilise marine food webs, weaken ocean health and jeopardise food security by 2050, according to a four-year study.Scientists who projected the impact of climate breakdown on four key groups of marine life crucial to maintaining ocean ecosystems in the region said their results challenged assumptions that in middle latitudes, such as the
  
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• World’s wettest rainstorms are getting wetter, affecting flood and drought risk

  05-11-2026 07:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Events that deliver about half of global rainfall are getting shorter but more intense, with wide-ranging implicationsThe world’s wettest rainstorms produce about half of the global annual rainfall. Now a study shows that these intense downpours have become shorter in duration and fewer in number, compressing the same amount of rain into quicker and more extreme events, with implications for flood and drought risk.Chiyuan Miao and colleagues from Beijing Normal University in China analysed dai
  
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• Country diary: The autumn glory of a tulip tree | Jennifer Jones

  05-11-2026 06:30 via Environment | The Guardian
  Liverpool: Their summer flowers provide the name and the fame, but this species is arguably at its best nowBeech mast crunches underfoot, and the occasional conker catches the sunlight, tiny beacons leading me to Camp Hill, south Liverpool, with its distant views over the Mersey estuary. Goldfinches erupt from desiccated knapweed, and a flock of pink-footed geese fly overhead. For once, the birds are not my goal, but a tree: the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera).Every autumn, the Camp Hill tu
  
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• Lab-grown meat was supposed to save the world. What happened?

  05-11-2026 06:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  We were promised a panacea for the climate crisis and a way to save our food system. So why is nobody firing up the chicken vats? I went to find outOn 5 August 2013, a man and a woman ate a burger. Not just any burger: a world-historic burger, made from cattle cells grown in a laboratory by Mark Post, a professor of vascular physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The burger had taken two years to produce and cost €250,000 (about £210,000 at the time), money furnished by the G
  
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• Firework noise limit should be drastically cut to protect wild animals, UK government told

  04-11-2026 12:47 via Environment | The Guardian
  Ministers urged to go further than proposed cut to 110 decibels to ease acute stress on birds and others animalsCampaigners are calling on the government to protect the welfare of wild animals by cutting the maximum noise level of fireworks sold to the public from 120 to 90 decibels.The Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW) has said lowering the limit to 90 decibels – which is about one-eighth of the loudness of 120 decibels – would help to protect millions of wild animals from acute stress
  
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• How a scientist went from hero to traitor in a US water crisis - video

  04-11-2026 11:47 via Environment | The Guardian
  When the water in Flint, Michigan, became contaminated with dangerous levels of lead, Dr Siddhartha Roy, then a third year PhD student, was part of the team of scientists who publicly contradicted state and federal claims that it was safe. He became a local hero until a new piece of research challenged the idea that children in Flint had been left permanently brain damaged by the crisis. His adherence to the evidence, no matter who it offended, has earned him the 2026 Maddox prize, which recogni
  
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• The next global pandemic could be brewing on a mink farm in Utah – and little is being done to stop it | George Monbiot

  04-11-2026 07:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Mink farms are the perfect petri dishes for deadly flu strains to emerge. Yet officials appear to be protecting business interests over human livesCould this be ground zero? Could it be the spot where the next pandemic begins? It’s certainly a candidate, not least because the chain of events that could trigger a plague far worse than Covid-19 looks like the opening sequence of a disaster movie. A really bad disaster movie, in which the levels of carelessness and turpitude defy belief.A report
  
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• How penguin poo is making Antarctic snow melt faster

  04-11-2026 07:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Researchers find the birds’ guano feeds algal blooms that absorb significantly more solar energyPenguin poo is making the Antarctic snow melt faster, a study shows. As temperatures rise, penguins are waddling closer to the south pole, with potential for this previously unrecognised phenomenon to affect a wider area.Snow algae are tiny single-celled plants that make a home in some of the coldest places on Earth. When nutrients are scarce, the algae produces red pigments to protect itself from t
  
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• Country diary: This small bridge is becoming the site of so many stories | Derek Niemann

  04-11-2026 06:30 via Environment | The Guardian
  Frome, Somerset: Dippers and fritillaries and pink campion … there is a deep satisfaction in accumulating associations with a regular hauntEnchantment surely fills the eyes of first-time visitors who come upon this little stone bridge over the stream. Do they marvel at the judgment of hands in building, wedding rock with rock, face against face? Do they arrive on a brighter morning than this, one on which sunbeams chase each other under the arch and cast sparkling reflections of water on the u
  
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• From the archive: The trials of Robert Habeck: is the world’s most powerful green politician doomed to fail? – podcast

  04-11-2026 06:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authorsThis week, from 2023: A year ago, Germany’s vice-chancellor was one of the country’s best-liked public figures. Then came the tabloid-driven backlash. Now he has to win the argument all over againBy Philip Oltermann. Read by Sam Peter JacksonRead the text version hereSupport the Guardian today: theguardian.com/longreadpod Continue reading...
  
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• Kashmir’s potato pits are vanishing – and generations of knowledge could be buried for ever

  04-11-2026 04:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Farmers in Gurez store their harvests underground to last the Himalayan winter. As the practice fades, local varieties and handed-down skills are disappearing tooHajra Begum rolls a potato in her hands, checking its skin for cuts, soft spots and signs of rot. After a day harvesting in her family’s field in Chorwan, a remote mountain village in Gurez, Indian-administered Kashmir, she is sorting the crop for winter storage. Some of the potatoes will feed her family through the cold months; other
  
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• Great Britain’s worst-ever bluetongue season ‘a major animal welfare crisis’

  03-11-2026 16:50 via Environment | The Guardian
  British Veterinary Association president tells MPs surge in cases putting farmers under severe pressure and stressThe worst bluetongue season on record has been a major animal welfare crisis in Great Britain, MPs have been told, putting farmers under “severe emotional stress”.Bluetongue, a viral disease that affects sheep, cattle and goats, can cause fever, lesions, stillbirths and death. The tongue may go blue and protrude from the mouth. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘Music is the most powerful way of connecting to what’s happening’: can this album change your mind about the climate crisis?

  03-11-2026 15:21 via Environment | The Guardian
  With globe-spanning artists – including Charlotte Church doing angry electropop – the Flow project is hoping to make an impact at this month’s Cop31Amid tense and long-winded negotiations, and with the future of the planet at stake, emotions can often run high at Cop climate summits. But last year, when the annual conference arrived in Brazil, one UN official was unexpectedly moved to tears by five women singing about the power of water.“She gave me a massive hug after the event and said
  
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• New tool will help gardeners move away from thirsty English classics to drought-resistant plants

  03-11-2026 14:05 via Environment | The Guardian
  
  Exclusive: Garden Climate Assessment Tool will allow users to predict a plant’s response to the projected climate in a given location“In the 20th century, we could pretty much grow the same things with confidence, we could learn from previous generations,” said Prof Sam Brockington, a curator at Cambridge University Botanic Garden.“But now we’re moving into climate scenarios that we just don’t have the traditions to understand fully.” Continue reading...
  
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• North America’s most widely distributed game bird is under threat

  03-11-2026 14:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  For the first time since 1937, no open permits to hunt ruffed grouse in Ohio have been issued due to falling numbersEvery November, hundreds of hunters descend on four designated wilderness areas in southern Ohio in pursuit of the elusive ruffed grouse.But not this year. Continue reading...
  
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