The Guardian

From the Strait of Gibraltar to Galicia, orcas have been harassing yachts, damaging vessels and injuring crew

Scientists have been left baffled by incidents of orcas ramming sailing boats along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts.

In the last two months, from southern to northern Spain, sailors have sent distress calls after worrying encounters. Two boats lost part of their rudders, at least one crew member suffered bruising from the impact of the ramming, and several boats sustained serious damage.

Europe is a far more important export market for the UK, as business leaders know – bigger even than the US

There was a consistent message from business leaders to international trade secretary Liz Truss’s claims that she had signed a “historic” deal with Japan to lower tariffs and gain access to previously restricted markets.

Thank you, they said, but could you please sign a deal with the EU because that is our most important export market.

The climate crisis is upon us all but the president pursues more rollbacks. This election offers an existential choice

The air outside my window is yellow today. It was orange yesterday. The Air Quality Index is over 200. The Environmental Protection Agency defines this as a “health alert” in which “everyone may experience more serious health effects if they are exposed for 24 hours”. Unfortunately, the index has been over 200 for several days.

Related: Wildfires are striking closer and closer to cities. We know how this will end | Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano

Record-breaking wildfires are threatening thousands of acres of one of the most biologically diverse areas on the planet, Brazil's Pantanal region.

'Sometimes we are a bit frustrated, but we try to have hope and to rescue the few animals we can,' said 26-year-old vet Karen Ribeiro at one of the shelters, where rescue units and volunteers are bringing in animals including jaguars for evacuation

‘Stop the world’ the musical hero said whenever things went wrong. I’ve been feeling this way for a few years now

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

The sense of time-slip begins during the summer megafires. Walking my children home from school in Sydney under a red sun I have the nagging feeling, beneath my anxiety, that I’ve seen this close orange light before. Then I remember. My father made our family nativity set out of pumpkin-coloured cardboard, topped with a skylight of red acrylic. The sideboard lamp cast the same uncanny glow on to baby Jesus and his shadowless entourage.

Three months later, in early March, my partner and I are driving the twins down the south coast through green dairy country to isolate from the coronavirus. “Does the sky seem particularly blue to you?” he asks as we look up the valley. “I’m having a ‘severe clear’ moment.” A dark joke between us: pilots used the term to describe a sky of perfect visibility on the morning of 9/11. With most planes cancelled, there are no bright contrails in the usually busy flight path above the escarpment. The air is alert and tender. It occurs to me that we haven’t seen a sky like this since our own childhoods, near the beginning of the Great Acceleration, when the indicators of human activity on the “planetary dashboard” began their upward surge.

Celebrities hit back at move to brand protesters as part of ‘organised crime group’

Stephen Fry, Mark Rylance and a former Archbishop of Canterbury are among 150 public figures to hit back at government moves to classify the climate protesters of Extinction Rebellion as an “organised crime group”. In a letter to be published in the Observer on Sunday, XR is described as “a group of people who are holding the powerful to account” – who should not become targets of “vitriol and anti-democratic posturing”.

It comes in response to the prime minister and home secretary’s reported move to review how the group is classified in law after it disrupted the distribution of four national newspapers, including the Sun and the Daily Mail, last Saturday.

The California governor, Gavin Newsom, said ‘this is not a world that anyone should be experiencing’ as he surveyed charred mountain terrain devastated by wildfires. ‘If you do not believe in science, I hope you believe in observed evidence,’ he added. More than 68,000 people are under evacuation orders in California where the largest fire in state history has burned over 740,000 acres in the Mendocino National forest

• Dozens missing in Oregon as historic fires devastate western US

The climate crisis is a factor, but so are efforts to fight fires - which have had the opposite effect

We call them wildfires, but that might not be the right word any more.

In recent days, at least five whole towns have been destroyed by fire in Oregon. So has much of Malden, Washington, and swathes of Big Creek and Berry Creek, both in California.

A media watchdog analysis found that just 15% of broadcast news segments over a September weekend made the connection to climate breakdown

Most news coverage of the wildfires raging in California, Washington and Oregon on American TV channels made no mention of the connection between the historic fires and climate crisis, according to a new analysis from Media Matters

Reviewing coverage aired over the 5-8 September holiday weekend, the progressive media watchdog group found that only 15% of corporate TV news segments on the fires mentioned the climate crisis. A separate analysis found that during the entire month of August only 4% of broadcast news wildfire coverage mentioned climate crisis.

Reneging on international deals does not put the UK in a good position to lead global initiatives in the run-up to UN climate talks

A decade ago, the writer and scientist James Lovelock despaired that the main obstruction to meaningful action to tackle the climate emergency was democracy itself. “Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being,” he told this newspaper. “I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while”. China’s claim to leadership in global green debates is rooted in the idea that only enlightened dictators can take a long view, overcome entrenched interests and force the required changes in societies. However, eco-authoritarians see democracy through a glass, darkly.

Dealing with humanity’s impact on the planet is not a war to be ended in a decisive victory. It is a constant struggle of adaptation and mitigation. The route lies not in suspending democracy but enhancing it. Time is short. Even reducing greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible, we can barely keep temperatures below dangerous limits. The moment urgently requires the public to be instilled with a commitment to ecological values and a desire to act in the face of an existential challenge. That is why the UK’s first climate assembly is so important. It involved a group of 100 or so randomly selected UK citizens meeting and discussing with experts how the country should reach net zero emissions by 2050.

The best of the week’s wildlife pictures from around the world, from mountain lion cubs in California to an orca with her new calf

The oldest snake in captivity – known only as 361003 – hasn’t been near a male python for two decades

Experts at a US zoo are trying to figure out how a 62-year-old ball python laid seven eggs despite not being near a male python for at least two decades.

Three of the eggs from the snake in St Louis zoo remain in an incubator, two were used for genetic sampling and snakes in the other two eggs did not survive, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The eggs were laid on 23 July and should hatch in about a month.

Over 600 people were arrested during the environmental demonstrations in London

Ten days of Extinction Rebellion demonstrations in London ended with naked protests and an arrest over graffiti daubed on a statue of Winston Churchill.

At least 648 people have been arrested during the environmental action, including one man on Thursday on suspicion of causing criminal damage to the statue in Parliament Square.

Retailers say they don’t have enough time to adjust to law, which is likely to come into force in early 2021

South Australia has become the first Australian state to introduce laws banning some single-use plastics including cutlery, straws and stirrers.

Environmental campaigners say the laws, likely to come into force in early 2021, are historic and will help protect wildlife on land and in the oceans.

By early June, emissions had mostly returned to the levels of the same period in 2019, the report found

The Covid-19 pandemic will deliver an unprecedented annual drop in global greenhouse gas emissions of up to 7% by the end of 2020, but the slowdown’s impact on the atmosphere will be almost imperceptible, according to a major report led by the United Nations.

Analysis of fossil fuel burning found emissions hit their lowest daily rate in April but by June – as economies began to open up again – emissions were returning to the same levels seen the previous year.

Ripping up drains and releasing rats may not sound like popular moves, but through urban ecology projects, volunteers and locals are building a new harmony with nature

“In wildness,” declared Henry David Thoreau, “is the preservation of the world.”

But what does wildness mean in the Anthropocene, an era in which, by definition, humanity’s influence reshapes the entire planet?

The state’s koala population could become extinct by 2050. This is not the time to water down protections

The New South Wales National party’s decision to make koalas casualties of a political feud in order to threaten the successful coalition with the state Liberal party is as bizarre as it is misguided.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian is dealing with the duel crises of the Covid-19 outbreak and its economic impact as well as any leader in the developed world. Her ability to limit further outbreaks while maintaining freedom of movement and an open economy is literally the envy of the world and her own state counterparts.

Discovery of deadly virus in wild boar cadaver leads to crisis measures including hunting, harvesting and leisure bans

German farmers have been ordered to enact a series of crisis measures after the discovery of the country’s first case of African swine fever (ASF).

The arrival of the highly infectious disease, found in the cadaver of a wild boar close to the German border with Poland in the state of Brandenburg, is a devastating blow to farmers who have been at pains for several years to keep it at bay.

Centre Alliance’s Stirling Griff joins independents Rex Patrick and Jacqui Lambie to oppose EPBC Act changes

Crossbench senators have vowed to block the Morrison government’s proposed changes to environmental laws next month, in part because they include nothing to improve the protection of Australia’s ailing wildlife and natural heritage.

The Coalition last week used its numbers to gag debate in the lower house of parliament and force through changes that would transfer greater development approval powers to state and territory governments.

Animal populations have plunged an average of 68% since 1970, as humanity pushes the planet’s life support systems to the edge

Wildlife populations are in freefall around the world, driven by human overconsumption, population growth and intensive agriculture, according to a major new assessment of the abundance of life on Earth.

On average, global populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles plunged by 68% between 1970 and 2016, according to the WWF and Zoological Society of London (ZSL)’s biennial Living Planet Report 2020. Two years ago, the figure stood at 60%.