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Exclusive: 17 sites recorded elevated levels, in some cases thousands of times higher than proposed safe limits, as experts warn of potential risk to drinking water
“Alarmingly high” levels of toxic forever chemicals have been detected at English airports – in some cases thousands of times higher than proposed EU safe levels – with experts raising concerns over the potential impact on drinking water sources.
Seventeen airports recorded elevated levels of Pfas in the ground and surface water sample on their sites, according to unpublished Environment Agency documents, obtained exclusively by the Ends Report and the Guardian via an environmental information request.
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Professional body says firefighters ‘pushed to brink’ by climate crisis-fuelled blazes, as wildfire in North Yorkshire continues to burn
UK firefighters have warned that 2025 is on track to beat the national record for wildfires, with frontline staff “pushed to their limits”.
On Wednesday, a major incident was declared in the North York Moors national park, with 20 fire engines deployed to tackle at least 5 sq km of moorland that has been burning since Monday.
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Anish Kapoor work referring to ‘butchering of our environment’ believed to be first fine artwork exhibited from a working gas extraction platform
Greenpeace activists have scaled a gas rig, stretched a 96 sq metre canvas across its side and stained it crimson, in a protest designed with Anish Kapoor.
The work, in the North Sea, is believed to be the first piece of fine art exhibited from a working gas extraction platform.
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With sea levels rising, much of the nation’s population is confronting the prospect that their home may soon cease to exist. Where are they going to go?
In November 2022, Simon Kofe, then foreign minister of the island nation of Tuvalu, announced a sensational plan for his country’s survival. Climate breakdown poses an existential threat to small island-nations in the Pacific, but Tuvalu’s geography makes it especially vulnerable. The highest point of elevation in the country is 4.5 metres. If the water rises, there is no hill to run to. In the past four decades, local sea level has risen twice as fast as the global average.
By 2050, the government expects half of the capital, Funafuti, to be flooded by tidal waters. By the end of the century, more than 90% of the land could be submerged. “As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation,” Kofe declared in a video address to delegates at the UN climate conference Cop27. In the background was an islet of Funafuti, Te Afualiku.
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Two tennis courts’ worth of wet wipes have accumulated in a rotting pile by Hammersmith Bridge. I went along to witness the horrors – and the cleanup operation
Imagine several mounds of congealed grot(consistency akin to the insides of a leisure centre shower drain, or the world’s most disgusting pedal bin) washed up on the southern foreshore of the River Thames in London at low tide. Then, imagine a tourist from New Zealand stopping to take a picture and several videos of said grot – presumably to show his kin back home what louts we are – while diggers deposit big black clods of the stuff into the bed of a truck, and rowers glide blithely by.
Imagine it, or see it for yourself. Welcome to “Wet Wipe Island”, London’s newest – and grimmest – landmark.
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Author Michael Grunwald reckons with the challenge of food-based climate emissions in his new book We Are Eating the Earth
Ridding ourselves of fossil fuels has been a tortuously ponderous process and, in the current political era, one that can seem to be in full retreat. But we do have the tools to run our cities, vehicles and industries on clean energy and even through the murk of vested interest, the contours of a post-fossil world are becoming clearer.
Our system of producing food, though, is in a relative stone age when it comes to the climate crisis. We continue to raze vast tracts of carbon-rich forests for crop and grazing land thereby creating, by some estimates, as much as a third of all global planet-heating emissions.
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Almost 100 countries reject draft treaty as ‘unambitious’ and ‘inadequate’
Talks on the world’s first legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution have stalled just one day before the negotiations are due to end.
Some of the countries calling for an ambitious treaty to include targets to reduce plastic production, including Colombia, the EU and the UK, have rejected as “unacceptable” and “unambitious” a draft treaty text that does not include production caps, nor address chemicals used in plastic products.
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Mona likes her mood lighting and keeps at least two lamps on in every room; Monty feels it’s a waste of electricity. You decide whose argument is a turn-off?
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror
It seems illogical to have so many lights on in a small room. She turns them on,then leaves
I know it’s not energy-conscious to have all these lamps on, but I just love cosy mood lighting
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The Hampstead Storm turned streets into canals as 170.8mm of rain fell, most of it in just two and half hours
On the afternoon of 14 August 1975 the thunderstorms that developed across eastern England included a particularly intense outbreak in north London that became known as the Hampstead Storm.
This storm brought an astonishing 170.8mm (6.72in) of precipitation over a 24-hour period, the largest daily total recorded in the London area. Almost all of it fell in a colossal downpour of rain and hail from 5.30pm to 8.00pm.
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Europe is suffering from another heatwave as deadly temperatures of up to 44C hit the continent and wildfires blazed across the Mediterranean. To find out why Europe is heating faster than anywhere else, Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent, Ajit Niranjan, and to Adam Taylor, professor of anatomy at Lancaster University, to find out how we can try to stay cool as the temperature rises
Clips: ITV News, France 24
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