Environment news

• Should vegans eat palm oil?

  05-09-2017 08:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  The ubiquitous vegetable oil is plant-based so fits with a vegan diet, but its production can harm rainforests and biodiversityAs marketing slogans go, NotFrom.com offers something aspirational. Stacked on the virtual shelves of this new online vegan supermarket are row upon row of “animal and planet cruelty free” products.Only it’s not quite that simple. Yes, all of the products are plant-based and free from animal inputs. But, beyond this the line between what is and isn&rsqu
  
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• Compost your cutlery and avoid campsite ‘Armageddon’: how music festivals are going sustainable

  14-11-2026 00:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Warmer weather in Australia heralds the peak of the outdoor music and festival season. Compared with securing a ticket, reducing your festival footprint is easyChange by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprintGot a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at [email protected] fans heading to Strawberry Fields next weekend won’t need to drive.The multi-day music, arts and wellbeing
  
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• Can pornography help save Tasmania’s rainforests? Kirsha Kaechele hopes so

  13-11-2026 20:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  The ‘first lady’ of Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art has launched an OnlyFans portal with an ambitious – and controversial – goalThe forestry workers took unusual care as they picked their way through the mossy undergrowth of a Tasmanian forest. They were carrying a small group of furries – humans in animal suits that can cost thousands of dollars – mindful of not letting any tails drag in the mud. Hired as production crew for the day, they were more used to hearing the drone of
  
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• Cop31 as it happened: ‘You cannot build peace on a burning planet’, warns UN chief Guterres in final climate summit speech

  13-11-2026 16:27 via Environment | The Guardian
  Debate over climate science, transition away from fossil fuels, electrification and climate finance can begin in earnest as world leaders leave UN summitFar away from the conference centre, Norway’s supreme court has declared the state’s decision to award three permits for oil and gasfields in the North Sea invalid, as it had not accounted for the harm caused by burning the fuels.The decision, hailed as a win by climate campaigners, does not automatically revoke the permits or demand an imme
  
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• Cop31 live: ‘You cannot build peace on a burning planet’, warns UN chief Guterres in final climate summit speech

  13-11-2026 15:24 via Environment | The Guardian
  Debate over climate science, transition away from fossil fuels, electrification and climate finance can begin in earnest as world leaders leave UN summitFar away from the conference centre, Norway’s supreme court has declared the state’s decision to award three permits for oil and gasfields in the North Sea invalid, as it had not accounted for the harm caused by burning the fuels.The decision, hailed as a win by climate campaigners, does not automatically revoke the permits or demand an imme
  
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• Cop31 live: ‘I will never give up’ UN chief tells climate summit ahead of last address

  13-11-2026 13:53 via Environment | The Guardian
  Debate over climate science, transition away from fossil fuels, electrification and climate finance can begin in earnest as world leaders leave UN summitFar away from the conference centre, Norway’s supreme court has declared the state’s decision to award three permits for oil and gasfields in the North Sea invalid, as it had not accounted for the harm caused by burning the fuels.The decision, hailed as a win by climate campaigners, does not automatically revoke the permits or demand an imme
  
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• New York is running out of room for its waste even with Statue of Liberty-sized landfill

  13-11-2026 13:30 via Environment | The Guardian
  One company is proposing elongating the life of the dump, pungent smell and all, several more decadesAs a visual representation of how New York is running out of places to put its waste, the largest active landfill in the state is a striking one. The hulking Seneca Meadows landfill is already the height of the Statue of Liberty and its operators are seeking to raise it even further, to the consternation of nearby residents.The landfill, situated in the scenic Finger Lakes region in the northern
  
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• New York is running out of room for its waste even with Statue of Liberty sized landfill

  13-11-2026 13:30 via Environment | The Guardian
  One company is proposing elongating the life of the dump, pungent smell and all, several more decadesAs a visual representation of how New York is running out of places to put its waste, the largest active landfill in the state is a striking one. The hulking Seneca Meadows landfill is already the height of the Statue of Liberty and its operators are seeking to raise it even further, to the consternation of nearby residents.The landfill, situated in the scenic Finger Lakes region in the northern
  
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• El Niño will increase risk of death in childbirth for millions, say midwives

  13-11-2026 13:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  
  Effects of extreme weather expected in countries that already have high maternal and newborn death ratesEl Niño stokes a higher risk of death in childbirth for millions of women in the world’s harshest crisis zones, midwives have warned.Converging waves of weather – floods, cyclones and extreme heat – forecast to peak in the coming months will prove fatal for many, especially pregnant women, who face being cut off from hospital when in labour. Continue reading...
  
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• A super El Niño brings startling changes for marine life on California coast: ‘like nothing we’ve ever seen’

  13-11-2026 13:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Water temperatures are climbing the charts, high tides are swallowing the shoreline and vital parts of the food web that feed ocean diversity are disappearingOn a picturesque autumn afternoon last week, the beaches of California’s Monterey Bay were teeming with life and death.A cadre of shorebirds charged and retreated in a synchronized dance with the raging surf. Nearby, the receding tides had deposited lifeless bundles of feathers and bone, tangled in piles of glistening kelp. Swollen sea li
  
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• Week in wildlife: Scottish beavers, running giraffes and good news for dormice

  13-11-2026 09:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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• Cop31 live: Climate crisis negotiations heat up on fifth day of talks

  13-11-2026 08:55 via Environment | The Guardian
  Debate over climate science, transition away from fossil fuels, electrification and climate finance can begin in earnest as world leaders leave UN summitChina has ruled out hosting the Cop33 UN climate summit in 2028 after months of deliberations, leaving the field open for other Asian countries to hold it, the Guardian understands.The decision will disappoint many countries and climate experts, who had hoped the world’s biggest emitter would take the lead on the global stage, as the US under
  
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• Children’s exposure to home wood-burning could be as significant as traffic exhaust, study suggests

  13-11-2026 07:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Research finds highest levels of cancer-related PAH pollutants in cities that have widespread wood heatingChildren’s exposure to home wood-burning could be as significant as exposure to traffic exhaust, suggests new research across six European towns and cities.Scientists measured the air in buildings where children spend much of their time; in schools, sports centres and homes. Specifically, they looked at polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), a family of pollutants that are given off when
  
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• Country diary: Why did some trees fall in the storms and others not? It could be spalting | Kate Blincoe

  13-11-2026 06:30 via Environment | The Guardian
  Caistor St Edmund, Norfolk: The woodland floor is littered with sycamore and ash, some revealing a pattern that runs through trunks like words in a stick of rockAn ash tree swayed, audibly groaning, a split in the trunk opening and closing like a mouth. Suffering from ash dieback, it seemed it could topple at any second here in the quiet of the woodland. A few weeks ago, Dad set the trail camera on it, to capture the moment of fall. Since then, two storms have churned through Norfolk – treatin
  
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• World is now in ‘age of electricity’, energy agency chief says

  13-11-2026 06:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Exclusive: Fossil fuels no longer dominant energy source, IEA leader says, as summit considers electrification pledgeThe world has left behind the age of coal, oil and gas and is now firmly in “the age of electricity”, the world’s leading energy economist has said.Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said more than twice as much electricity generation would be added to the global economy in the next decade than in the last, as countries scramble to
  
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• ‘I spend less, that’s all that matters’: life in the world’s most electrified countries

  13-11-2026 06:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Owning an electric car, driving an electric motorbike taxi, riding scooters – we speak to people in Oslo, Kigali and Shanghai about their everyday routinesThe race to electrification has emerged as a key theme of this year’s UN climate summit: increasing the use of electricity – particularly from clean sources – has the potential to improve daily life for people around the world.The summit’s co-hosts are now trying to get countries to promise to increase their electricity use to 35% of
  
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• ‘El Niño turned off the taps’: factors behind Indonesia’s wildfires revealed

  13-11-2026 05:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Country’s fiercest blazes in at least a decade produced toxic smog blamed for 400,000 respiratory infections Indonesia’s fiercest fires in at least a decade were amplified by an “El Niño that turned off the taps” and “fossil fuels that turned up the heat”, scientists have revealed.Along with the conversion of forests to plantations, this created the conditions for blazes that have burned almost 3m hectares (7.4m acres) – 19 times the size of Greater London – this year, and cast
  
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• ‘Goats are good. They listen’: the herder who defeated Montenegro’s military – and can identify her cows’ herby burps

  12-11-2026 17:14 via Environment | The Guardian
  To Hold a Mountain tells the incredible story of a woman whose way of life was threatened when she heard her pastures were set to become a Nato training zoneThe star of To Hold a Mountain is having trouble with her goats, which keep escaping. So my interview with Mileva “Gara” Jovanović is rescheduled to a moment where the animals are under control and Gara can descend from the peaks to her small winter residence in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, for a video call.“You have to take ca
  
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• Cop31 as it happened: ‘No one is coming to rescue us,’ Greta Thunberg tells climate summit

  12-11-2026 16:30 via Environment | The Guardian
  World leaders including UK prime minister Andy Burnham addressed the summit today, as talks near the end of the first weekZack Polanski, leader of the Green party in the UK, criticised Andy Burnham’s Cop31 speech on Radio 4’s Today programme. Saying he was “not at all reassured” by the prime minister’s words, he described it as a “bizarre” speech.Polanski said climate action is about what you do, not what you say, referring to the recent decision by the energy secretary, Miatta Fah
  
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• ‘It is much, much faster’: could China’s battery-swapping e-trucks be the answer to EV range anxiety?

  12-11-2026 15:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  
  Battery maker CATL aims to have 2,000 swapping stations in China by the end of 2027 and to bring the tech to EuropeEvery day, Wang Bing drives his big electric lorry to send about five tonnes of goods between the cities of Haikou and Dongfang on Hainan, a tropical island in southern China. A round trip covers about 500 kilometres (310 miles). But refuelling is not something Wang worries about.“When my battery runs low, I just drive my truck into a battery-swapping station to get a fully charge
  
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• Rats, dengue and an all-day stench: can Panama City solve its waste crisis?

  12-11-2026 14:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  
  For decades, mountains of waste have blighted poor neighbourhoods on the edge of the city. But as the problems spread, a belated reckoning is under wayLife in San Miguelito has long been dictated by rubbish. Routes to the shop are carefully navigated to avoid pungent mountains of rotting waste, some visible from space. Driving during the rainy season is a perilous obstacle course, dodging black bin bags and rusty fridges in the middle of the road. Children are taught early to avoid the river, th
  
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• ‘I was home alone when the glacier collapsed. My mum called and told me to run’ – This is climate breakdown

  12-11-2026 13:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  She was sleeping in when the house started shaking. Then her mum called. This is Isha Remal’s storyLocation: Bidur, NepalDisaster: Floods, 2026Isha Remal is a 17-year-old volunteer for the Red Cross Society in Bidur, Nepal. This summer, her family was caught up in the floods that crashed through the country after a glacier collapsed – an event made more likely by climate change Continue reading...
  
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• Cop31 live: ‘No one is coming to rescue us,’ Greta Thunberg tells climate summit

  12-11-2026 12:26 via Environment | The Guardian
  World leaders including UK prime minister Andy Burnham are addressing the summit today, as talks head into the third dayZack Polanski, leader of the Green party in the UK, criticised Andy Burnham’s Cop31 speech on Radio 4’s Today programme. Saying he was “not at all reassured” by the prime minister’s words, he described it as a “bizarre” speech.Polanski said climate action is about what you do, not what you say, referring to the recent decision by the energy secretary, Miatta Fahnb
  
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• Trump the ‘biggest loser’ for scrapping climate action, John Kerry says at Cop31

  12-11-2026 12:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  
  Kerry decries president for ceding clean-energy dominance to China and says climate crisis still a key issue for votersDonald Trump is the “biggest loser we’ve seen in a long time” for scrapping action on the climate crisis and ceding the clean energy race to China, former US secretary of state John Kerry has said.Kerry, speaking at the Cop31 climate summit in Turkey, criticized Trump for withdrawing the US from the international climate process and axing measures that reduced planet-heati
  
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• First guidelines on attempts to manipulate the ocean put spotlight on geoengineering industry

  12-11-2026 12:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  Proponents argue ocean carbon removal is necessary to counteract the effects of the climate crisis but critics say more research is needed A cluster of candy cane-striped smoke stacks dots the horizon of Tufts Cove in Nova Scotia, Canada. Deep in the briny depths of Halifax harbour, something huge is happening: the ocean is being engineered to remove atmospheric carbon.“This is what Mother Nature has done naturally for a few billion years in order to rebalance the atmospheric and ocean chemist
  
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• Datacentres are deeply unpopular. Has Sweden made one we can all love?

  12-11-2026 12:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  It is built of wood, resembles an Ikea and its power is totally renewable. Plus, it was built with the local community in mind. Is this facility in Falun the best datacentre in the world?‘It was pretty cool, when they were building it. It looked like a very large Ikea,” says John Wernvik, of EcoDataCenter. He is giving me a tour of their facility in Falun, Sweden, which could lay claim to being the world’s greenest datacentre – although to many, that is a contradiction in terms.One diffe
  
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• Cop31: how far off target are we? - video

  12-11-2026 11:00 via Environment | The Guardian
  As the planet faces unprecedented human-caused global heating, heads of government are meeting in Turkey for the next fortnight for the latest round of climate talks. Madeleine Finlay tells co-host Ian Sample why these negotiations are so critical and what the chances are of meaningful change. Continue reading...
  
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• Cop31: “No one is coming to rescue us” Greta Thunberg tells climate summit

  12-11-2026 10:24 via Environment | The Guardian
  World leaders including UK prime minister Andy Burnham are addressing the summit today, as talks head into the third dayZack Polanski, leader of the Green party in the UK, criticised Andy Burnham’s Cop31 speech on Radio 4’s Today programme. Saying he was “not at all reassured” by the prime minister’s words, he described it as a “bizarre” speech.Polanski said climate action is about what you do, not what you say, referring to the recent decision by the energy secretary, Miatta Fahnb
  
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• Cop31: ‘The crisis is upon us now’, Burnham tells climate summit

  12-11-2026 09:08 via Environment | The Guardian
  World leaders including UK prime minister Andy Burnham are addressing the summit today, as talks head into the third dayZack Polanski, leader of the Green party in the UK, criticised Andy Burnham’s Cop31 speech on Radio 4’s Today programme. Saying he was “not at all reassured” by the prime minister’s words, he described it as a “bizarre” speech.Polanski said climate action is about what you do, not what you say, referring to the recent decision by the energy secretary, Miatta Fahnb
  
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• Water industry bonus ban to be tightened as Ofwat warns of ‘damage to public trust’

  12-11-2026 08:59 via Environment | The Guardian
  Regulator to hasten review over concerns that firms are ‘undermining’ rules to make large payments to bossesThe water company bonus ban is set to be tightened after the regulator accused the industry of a risk of “damaging public trust” with large payments to bosses that appeared to get around the rules.Anglian Water was singled out for particular criticism over “retention payments” worth up to £800,000 for chief executive Mark Thurston despite the bonus ban. Anglian will face incre
  
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