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Regulator and government accused of colluding with water industry to dump potentially toxic waste without oversight
An Environment Agency (EA) insider has broken ranks to expose what they describe as a “deliberate and ongoing cover-up” of the public health and environmental dangers of spreading sewage sludge on farmland.
They accuse the regulator and government of colluding with water companies for years to facilitate the dumping of waste under the guise of soil enrichment – without oversight, transparency or testing.
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Mass lobby in Westminster is kicked off with giant image on cliffs of Dover stating ‘89% of people want climate action’
More than 5,000 people from across the UK arrived in Westminster on Wednesday to meet their MPs and demand urgent climate action to protect their communities.
The mass lobby is one of the largest to date. The constituents, including parents and pensioners, doctors, teachers, farmers and youth campaigners, have arranged to lobby at least 500 MPs, about 80% of the total.
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Heat caused 2,300 deaths across 12 cities, of which 1,500 were down to climate crisis, scientists say
Planet-heating pollution tripled the death toll from the “quietly devastating” heatwave that seared Europe at the end of June, early analysis covering a dozen cities has found, as experts warned of a worsening health crisis that is being overlooked.
Scientists estimate that high heat killed 2,300 people across 12 major cities as temperatures soared across Europe between 23 June and 2 July. They attributed 1,500 of the deaths to climate breakdown, which has heated the planet and made the worst extremes even hotter.
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Dr Tim Gregory argues that nuclear power is safe, relatively cheap and the only realistic route to achieving net zero targets
Dr Tim Gregory is a nuclear evangelist. A chemist who works in the labs of Sellafield, Britain’s oldest nuclear site, he argues that embracing nuclear energy is the only way to achieve net zero.
He tells Helen Pidd it is an energy source long misunderstood – unfairly tainted by the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. It is a safe technology, he says, and despite the billions it costs to build nuclear plants, it represents good value for money.
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Exclusive: Defra warned three years ago of farmland contamination by water firms’ sewage-derived product
Government ministers have ignored Environment Agency pleas to tighten rules on the use of sludge fertiliser for three years, despite the regulator having said that water company attitudes towards the substance are “akin to fly-tipping on to agricultural land”, it can be revealed.
Sludge, sometimes referred to as biosolids, is a byproduct of the sewage treatment process that is sold by water companies to farmers as a low-cost fertiliser.
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Thousands of people are killed each year by floods – and climate breakdown is making them more likely
Deluges of water are washing away people, homes and livelihoods as extreme rains make rivers burst their banks and high seas help send storm tides surging over coastal walls. How dangerous is flooding – and what can we do to keep ourselves safe?
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Sharpenhoe Clappers, Bedfordshire: The chimney sweeper moths are keeping a low profile, but others are putting on a display
As we swelter through the meadow, our heat-loving companions bask on knapweed and field scabious, stirring every few seconds to chase off rivals or woo potential mates. The dark green fritillaries and feisty marbled whites command our attention with their dramatic and intricate wing markings, while small heaths, skippers, ringlets and meadow browns provide the butterfly chorus.
Distracted by the razzle-dazzle, I’ve forgotten that we’re hunting for a sooty anomaly in the summer meadow. With its penchant for flying in bright sunshine, the chimney sweeper could be mistaken for a butterfly, but is, in fact, a day-flying moth. It’s one of about 130 macro-moths in the UK that take to the wing during daylight hours, more than twice the number of butterfly species. Many exhibit vivid colouration or striking patterns, such as the cinnabar, emperor, scarlet tiger or hornet moths. In contrast, the chimney sweeper has no patterning on its black body save for a white margin on the forewings, and it keeps a low profile, alighting on grass stems or making short flights around the white umbel flowers of pignut, its larval food plant. Today, its profile is so low that we fail to see it at all.
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Exploring the magical landscape that inspired Narnia and stars as a location in Game of Thrones – just an hour outside of Belfast
Where is the finest mountain panorama in the UK? As a nine-year-old I was taken up Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) and told it was the best. Even in those days, it was a struggle to see much except the backs of other people. The following summer Scafell Pike got the same treatment and the next year we climbed Ben Nevis. I disagreed on all counts. For me, Thorpe Cloud in Dovedale was unbeatable, despite it being under a thousand feet tall. What convinced me was the diminutive Derbyshire peak’s shape: a proper pointy summit with clear space all around, plus grassy slopes that you could roll down. The champion trio could not compare.
This panorama question is in my mind as I begin hiking up Slieve Donard, Northern Ireland’s highest peak (at 850 metres), but a mountain often forgotten by those listing their UK hiking achievements. And a proper peak it is too, with a great sweeping drop to the sea and loads of space all around, guaranteeing, I reckon, a view to beat its more famous rivals.
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Shanxi produces more coal than India. How will it survive in China’s clean energy future?
Deep in the recesses of an underground cavern, covered in dust and soot, Xu Xiaobo wondered why, having recently graduated with a degree in mechanics, he was on his hands and knees sifting through layers of coal sludge. But there was no time to ponder the ancestral forces that had brought him down into one of his province’s oldest mines. There was coal to dig for.
New to the job, keeping up with colleagues was challenging. As he tried to crawl at speed under a conveyor belt of coal, he landed badly and sprained his wrist. He still can’t rotate it properly.
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Experts scrambling to understand losses in hives across the country are finally identifying the culprits. And the damage to farmed bees is a sign of trouble for wild bees too
Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers.
Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. “Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,” says Adee. “Then a week later, there’d be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.”
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