The Guardian

Tyre attachment designed by four students aims to reduce road transport pollution

A device that captures microplastic particles from tyres as they are emitted – and could help reduce the devastating pollution they cause – has won its designers a James Dyson award.

The Tyre Collective, a group of masters students from Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art, scooped the UK prize of the international competition with their solution for the growing environmental scourge of tyre wear caused by road transport.

Matt Wright – known as ‘the outback wrangler’ – came across the large reptile while clearing logs in a river path in the Northern Territory

For most people, the sight of an approaching crocodile, mouth wide open, would provide the fright of a life. And their fear would be rightly placed, as encounters between man and saltwater crocs typically have deathly ends for the former.

Not for Matt Wright, the so-called “outback wrangler”.

The British public are way ahead of the government in their ideas for a fairer, greener country. Time for Downing Street to listen

Earlier this month, a dance troupe on an ITV light entertainment show created one of the most complained-about television moments of the past decade. In their performance, the dancers of Diversity reflected the carnage of Covid, deep-seated inequalities and, most of all, racism. They recreated the murder of George Floyd, then took the knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Unusual fare for Saturday prime-time, yet the audience lapped it up, whooping in the studio and enthusing on social media. And then the media regulator, Ofcom, was deluged with complaints – well over 20,000 by the start of this week, objecting to its political nature. That in turn provoked a petition supporting Diversity.

In this small story lies much that makes people despair of the state of UK democracy: deeply tribalistic, talking past rather than to each other, and with some (notably on the right) nursing their resentments like the dregs of an expensive cocktail. Yet it isn’t always so. A report by a cross-party group of MPs, to be published on Thursday, shows the public is far more thoughtful, is happy to talk across party divides, and way ahead of the government in ideas for a fairer, greener society.

The average Australian eats half a kilogram of meat every week. But meat production has a huge impact on the environment – it’s responsible for almost 10% of Australia’s carbon emissions. So can we still eat meat if we care about the environment? Experts say yes, but with some caveats. And there are things that industry and governments should be doing to make meat production more sustainable, too

• How Australia can ditch coal (without ditching jobs) – video
• How Australia can close the recycling loop – video

It’s the omnivore’s dilemma: is there an environmentally responsible way to continue eating meat? Cattle farmers like Charlie Arnott are working on a fix

“I would see paddocks blowing away in the wind,” laments pastoralist Charlie Arnott, as if confessing a crime. “That was confronting. Did I make that happen? Did decisions I make allow that topsoil to blow away?”

It was about 15 years ago, as the Millennium drought baked the life out of his farm in Boorowa, south-west of Sydney, that Arnott resolved to put a stop to the gusts of dirt being lost to the sky.

If there was a moment of true emergency in the fight to preserve our climate, it is now

• This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020

I was in Melbourne in late January, watching as more and more people donned face masks to protect themselves against the bushfire smoke that had thickened the air for weeks and that was causing hundreds of deaths. Turning on the news, I was surprised to see footage of crowds in China similarly masked, but for a very different reason. Hundreds were then dying in Wuhan, Hubei province, from a novel virus.

When I asked Australia’s chief medical officer about the virus that same week, I could see the concern in his eyes. But my attention was largely on the fires. They were unlike anything experienced on the continent previously, and climate scientists were beginning to piece together the link with climate change. What few knew back then was that three catastrophes would strike Australia in quick succession: the unprecedented, climate-fuelled megafires that were extinguished in February by damaging, climate-influenced floods. Then, in March, the Covid-19 pandemic that began to spread across Australia.

Protesters’ arrest tactic is a ‘pain in the neck’, Sir Stephen House tells committee hearing

One of Britain’s most senior police officers has launched an angry tirade against Extinction Rebellion protesters going “all floppy” when they get arrested.

Sir Stephen House, the deputy commissioner of the Met police, said the tactic of going limp was a “flipping nuisance” as it required extra officers to drag protesters away.

National security leaders view climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ that makes the homeland vulnerable

Climate change is not a distant problem for future generations to worry about. Instead, the dangers of climate change are touching the lives of more Americans with each passing day. As the historic wildfires, hurricanes, floods, heatwaves and storms hitting the country this summer demonstrate, these crises are getting more frequent and more intense as the global temperature rises. Scientists tell us that the longer we delay transitioning to a clean, renewable economy, the more intense the impacts and the closer we come to reaching dangerous climate tipping points.

These risks have a severe impact on the military’s ability to keep Americans safe. We’ve seen the destructive impact that weather disasters are having on US military bases, from the marine corps’ Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to Florida’s Tyndall air force base. They are also striking our neighborhoods, from rural farms to dense cities, requiring heroic rescue operations by the national guard. Climate impacts make the homeland more vulnerable, while also threatening American interests abroad. Because of this, national security leaders see climate change as a “threat multiplier” – increasing and exacerbating all other other risks our nation is already facing, from global terrorism to great power conflict.

Wildfires and climate crisis cited as possible causes for the deaths of thousands of migrating species heading south for the winter

Thousands of migrating birds have inexplicably died in south-western US in what ornithologists have described as a national tragedy that is likely to be related to the climate crisis.

Flycatchers, swallows and warblers are among the species “falling out of the sky” as part of a mass die-off across New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and farther north into Nebraska, with growing concerns there could be hundreds of thousands dead already, said Martha Desmond, a professor in the biology department at New Mexico State University (NMSU). Many carcasses have little remaining fat reserves or muscle mass, with some appearing to have nose-dived into the ground mid-flight.

Andrew Liveris, one of the architects of Scott Morrison’s ‘gas-led recovery’, says the country burns ‘far too much coal’

Corporate heavyweight Andrew Liveris, the Morrison government’s special adviser on manufacturing, has declared Australia and the world can hit net zero emissions by 2050 by significantly expanding the supply and domestic use of gas – despite gas being a fossil fuel with “roughly 60% of the emissions of coal”.

Liveris, who is one of the business architects of the Coalition’s much vaunted “gas-led recovery” plan, told the National Press Club on Wednesday Australia burned “far too much coal” and “switching to gas will automatically bring [emissions] down”.

The protest movement’s call for meaningful participation highlights the failings of dysfunctional Westminster politics

It’s good entertainment, but that’s all it is. Seeing Boris Johnson ritually dismembered in parliament might make us feel better, but nothing changes. He still has an 80-seat majority, though less than 30% of the electorate voted for the Conservatives. We are reduced, for five long years, to spectators.

Our system allows the victorious government a mandate to do what it likes between elections, without further reference to the people. As we have seen, this can include breaking international law, suspending parliament, curtailing the judiciary, politicising the civil service, attacking the Electoral Commission and invoking royal prerogative powers to make policy without anyone’s consent. This is not democracy, but a parody of democracy.

Review of EPBC Act was delivered to government 11 days after process of drawing up legislation had begun

The Morrison government started preparing controversial legislation to amend Australia’s environmental laws before it had received a report from a formal review into whether the act was working.

The environment department instructed the Office of Parliamentary Counsel to begin drafting the changes to the legislation on 19 June, 11 days before the government received the interim report of the review of Australia’s national environment laws.

Oil and gas companies make far more money churning out new plastic than reusing old. Meanwhile, the public gets the blame

Plastic recycling is a scam. You diligently sort your rubbish, you dutifully wash your plastic containers, then everything gets tossed in a landfill or thrown in the ocean anyway. OK, maybe not everything – but the vast majority of it. According to one analysis, only 9% of all plastic ever made has likely been recycled. Here’s the kicker: the companies making all that plastic have spent millions on advertising campaigns lecturing us about recycling while knowing full well that most plastic will never be recycled.

A new investigation by National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reports that the large oil and gas companies that manufacture plastics have known for decades that recycling plastic was unlikely to ever happen on a broad scale because of the high costs involved. “They were not interested in putting any real money or effort into recycling because they wanted to sell virgin material,” Larry Thomas, former president of one of the plastic industry’s most powerful trade groups, told NPR. There is a lot more money to be made in selling new plastic than reusing the old stuff. But, in order to keep selling new plastic, the industry had to clean up its wasteful image. “If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” Thomas noted. And so a huge amount of resources were diverted into intricate “sustainability theatre”.

‘Humanity at a crossroads’ after a decade in which all of the 2010 Aichi goals to protect wildlife and ecosystems have been missed

The world has failed to meet a single target to stem the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems in the last decade, according to a devastating new report from the UN on the state of nature.

From tackling pollution to protecting coral reefs, the international community did not fully achieve any of the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets agreed in Japan in 2010 to slow the loss of the natural world. It is the second consecutive decade that governments have failed to meet targets.

In climate change, the Four Horsemen have a perfect force of destruction. Maybe these fires and floods will be a wakeup call to stop stalling

As the west coast burns into an orange hellscape you have to wonder if those preaching the end of time aren’t on to something. The people smart enough to make a cellphone have been warning that we have no more than a decade to tamp down the climate crisis. Other wise men and women think we don’t even have that much time. We should listen.

People have been preaching the end of time since the beginning of time. The whole story got laid down in the Book of Revelations. Being raised Catholic, we did not read the Bible that much and were casually advised by the nuns to not wade too deep in that chapter. Concentrate on Love Thy Neighbor because Ye Shall Not Know the Hour or Day.

Deformities point to unsettling sign of extremely low genetic diversity in isolated population in the Santa Monica mountains

Mountain lions with crooked tails have been spotted in the Santa Monica mountains, an unsettling sign of extremely low genetic diversity within an isolated population of less than two dozen individuals roaming the rugged canyonlands just north of Los Angeles.

In early March, biologists examined a young sedated male mountain lion. The cougar, designated P-81, had a kinked tail shaped like the letter L and only one descended testicle, a condition known as cryptorchidism.

Mock Cop26 set up in frustration at lack of progress due to coronavirus crisis

Young climate activists have begun a parallel process to the UN climate crisis talks, in frustration at the lack of progress they perceive in world governments’ efforts to address the emergency.

Crunch negotiations aimed at fulfilling the Paris climate agreement, called Cop26, were to be hosted by the UK this November, but have been delayed by the coronavirus crisis. Activists, participants and observers have told the Guardian they are concerned at a lack of progress so far.

The US president is urged to recognise the changing climate and what it means to forests, during a briefing on the wildfires in California on Monday. Trump interrupts an official, Wade Crowfoot, the secretary of California’s Natural Resources Agency, to argue the climate 'will start getting cooler, you just watch'. Crowfoot responds: 'I wish science agreed with you.' To which Trump retorts: 'I don’t think science knows actually'

• Biden calls Trump a 'climate arsonist' as president denies science on wildfire tour

Exclusive: congestion climbed above 2019 levels in August as people went back to using cars after lockdown

Road traffic congestion in outer London is now far higher than it was last year as people have gone back into their cars after lockdown, according to new data.

Congestion climbed above 2019 levels in August, and has increased to nearly a fifth on average above last year, in roads outside the capital’s central congestion charging zone, even while it has dropped sharply in the centre of the city.

Firms join Apple and Microsoft in committing to put no excess carbon into the atmosphere

Facebook and Google are becoming carbon neutral businesses, joining competitors Apple and Microsoft in committing to put no excess carbon into the atmosphere, both companies have independently announced.

But the details of the two companies’ ambitions differs greatly. At Google, which first committed to going carbon neutral in 2007, the announcement sees the company declaring success in retroactively offsetting all carbon it has ever emitted, since its foundation in 1998. It has also committed to being powered exclusively by renewable energy by 2030.