The Guardian

A sleepy Bolivian peccary, fading British heather and a migrating heron in Turkey

Use of essential rock phosphate has soared, but scientists fear it could run out within a few decades

The world faces an “imminent crisis” in the supply of phosphate, a critical fertiliser that underpins the world’s food supply, scientists have warned.

Phosphate is an essential mineral for all life on Earth and is added to farmers’ fields in huge quantities. But rock phosphate is a finite resource and the biggest supplies are mined in politically unstable places, posing risks to the many countries that have little or no reserves.

Baby timber rattlesnake in New Jersey has two fully formed, independently working heads

Scientists have named a rare two-headed snake Double Dave after it was found in a forest in the US state of New Jersey.

The baby timber rattlesnake was discovered last month by environmentalists from the Herpetological Associates group, who study endangered and threatened reptiles.

‘For Forest – The Unending Attraction of Nature’ by Klaus Littmann has transformed the Wörthersee Stadium in Klagenfurt into Austria’s largest public art installation

Water bottles, cigarette lighters and fishing nets were among garbage found on Djulpan beach, Sea Shepherd says

Further evidence that plastic does not discriminate as it spreads across the planet: the marine conservation organisation Sea Shepherd said it is washing up in large quantities on a remote Australian beach.

Sea Shepherd joined Indigenous rangers in picking up more than seven tonnes of marine plastic pollution on a two-kilometre stretch of Djulpan beach, in northeastern Arnhem Land.

BHP says shareholder resolution to leave industry groups at odds with climate stance is unnecessary, as review is under way

BHP’s board has rejected as unnecessary a shareholder resolution requiring it to suspend its membership of organisations, including the Minerals Council of Australia, that are at odds with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

The miner said the resolution, backed by investors including tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes and a group of pension funds, was not needed because, as the Guardian has previously reported, it is already reviewing its membership of industry bodies.

Biggest fossil fuel extractors warned they risk wasting $2.2tn ‘in a low-carbon world’

Major oil and gas companies have invested $50bn (£40.6bn) in fossil fuel projects that undermine global efforts to avert a runaway climate crisis, according to a report.

Since the start of last year, fossil fuel companies have spent billions on high-cost plans to extract oil and gas from tar sands, deepwater fields and the Arctic despite the risks to the climate and shareholder returns.

Erwin Kräutler says he expects next month’s papal synod to denounce destruction of rainforest

The fires in the Amazon are a “true apocalypse”, according to a Brazilian archbishop who expects next month’s papal synod at the Vatican to strongly denounce the destruction of the rainforest.

The comments by Erwin Kräutler will put fresh pressure on Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, following criticism from G7 leaders last month over the surge of deforestation in the world’s biggest terrestrial carbon sink.

Plastic pollution has entered the fossil record, research shows

Plastic pollution is being deposited into the fossil record, research has found, with contamination increasing exponentially since 1945.

Scientists suggest the plastic layers could be used to mark the start of the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch in which human activities have come to dominate the planet. They say after the bronze and iron ages, the current period may become known as the plastic age.

King’s Cross Central | HS2 | River Thames | Van slogans

I was pleased that the developer of the King’s Cross area will stop using facial recognition equipment (Report, 3 September). Of course, if Camden council had paid heed to the local objectors in 2004 and 2005, it would have adopted all the roads and public footpaths on the site and could have prevented the installation of this surveillance. By the way, the development is called King’s Cross Central, not King’s Cross, which is an area of London in two boroughs with a large and diverse population. It was a bit of a shock to read in your report that “King’s Cross is owned by a consortium…”
Diana Shelley
London

• Larry Elliott is right to call for the first phase of HS2 to start with connecting northern cities with each other rather than with London (Business view, 4 September), but it is essential that such a programme should include the north-east.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords

UK breeders are hastily shipping in potential suitors for their rare species in the hope that they get it on ahead of a no-deal scenario

Name: Brexit breeding.

Age: Very much of its time.

Chemical is blamed for death of insects and suspected to cause cancer in humans

Germany has said it will phase out the controversial weedkiller glyphosate because it wipes out insect populations crucial for ecosystems and pollination of food crops.

The chemical, also suspected by some experts to cause cancer in humans, is to be banned by the end of 2023 when the EU’s approval period for it expires, ministers said.

Report urges meat, dairy and seafood companies to address impact of industry’s deforestation, use of antibiotics and emissions

The world’s biggest producers of meat, dairy and seafood are failing to tackle the enormous impact they are having on the planet through deforestation, the routine use of antibiotics and greenhouse gas emissions, a report warns.

The Coller Fairr index ranks 50 of the largest global meat, dairy and fish producers by looking at risk factors from use of antibiotics to deforestation and labour abuses. The producers are the “hidden” supply chain, providing meat and dairy to global brands including McDonald’s, Tesco, Nestlé and Walmart.

The American photographer Mustafah Abdulaziz has won the Leica Oskar Barnack photography award with his eight-year project exploring the global crisis around water, and how different cultures interact with this precious resource

Forest restoration is the number-one strategy for stopping global warming, according to some scientists – but Britain is falling far short. Here’s a complete guide to what you should be planting, and where

‘Tree planting ‘has mind-blowing potential’ to tackle climate crisis.” That’s how the Guardian reported findings from the Crowther Lab in Switzerland two months ago. Billions more trees, scientists claimed, could remove two-thirds of all the carbon dioxide created by human activity. Forest restoration “isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one,” said the lead scientist, climate change ecologist Tom Crowther.

Such a programme might take 100 years to be fully effective, but along the way it would reduce the consequences of the climate crisis – protecting soil from erosion, reducing the risk of flooding and providing habitats for a vast range of animals and other plant species.

Value of European agriculture could fall 16% in 30 years due to drought and higher rainfall

Any advantages to European agriculture from a warming world will be outweighed by the losses from extreme events and environmental stress, leading to a probable large economic loss for farming in the next 30 years, research on the impacts of the climate crisis has found.

While some have pointed to longer growing seasons and a wider range of crops becoming viable in northern Europe as benefits from temperature rises, the effects on rainfall and extreme conditions mean farming is already suffering.

‘The fight goes on,’ say activists after ignoring injunction at Cuadrilla site in Lancashire

Three anti-fracking activists have been given suspended prison sentences after breaking a ban on demonstrations which their lawyers argued “severely curtails the right to protest”.

The trio were convicted after ignoring an injunction brought by the energy company Cuadrilla to protect its Preston New Road site near Blackpool, Lancashire.

Prince Harry has faced flak for his carbon footprint but others face similar dilemma

Their style could hardly be more different, though their aims are the same: as Greta Thunberg sailed into New York last week on a low-carbon high-tech yacht to highlight the climate crisis, Prince Harry faced flak for taking private jets for short-hop breaks while campaigning against global heating. But the contrast between the two reflects broader dilemmas in the environmental movement.

On Tuesday, the Duke of Sussex invited further ridicule as he flew into Amsterdam – a direct Eurostar train from London takes three hours and 41 minutes – to unveil a new initiative for the tourism industry, Travalyst, aiming to reduce the impact of holidaymakers – while encouraging travel.

Hills Shire council said it had received 40 complaints over three years about the magpie, and several people had been injured

A local council in Sydney’s north west has said a decision to shoot dead a “particularly aggressive magpie” that had allegedly swooped and injured people for years was “not taken lightly”.

The Hills Shire council had received 40 complaints over the past three years, with confirmed injuries, including people sent to hospital as a result of being swooped by the magpie on Old Windsor Road in Bella Vista.

Depths of lakes that hold about 90% of US’s freshwater spiking to record levels, from 14in to nearly 3ft above long-term averages

This summer, as rain relentlessly poured down on the Great Lakes region, Detroit declared a rare state of emergency. The swollen Detroit River had spilled into the low-lying Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood – an event not seen near this scale since 1986.

Volunteers sandbagged the area as the city’s overwhelmed sewer system spilled raw sewage into the river, which connects Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Across the channel from Jefferson Chalmers, water damaged the historic boathouse on Belle Isle, an iconic 982-acre island park that remains partly shut down because of flooding.