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Exclusive: Fixing a leak can be simple and equivalent to closing a coal power station, making lack of action maddening, say analysts
The world’s worst mega-leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane in 2025 have been revealed by an analysis of satellite data.
The super-polluting plumes from oil and gas facilities have a colossal heating impact on the climate but often result from poor maintenance and can be simple to fix. The assessment found dozens of mega-leaks, each having the same global heating impact as a coal-fired power station.
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Our photojournalist explores the Cornish landmark on the eve of its anniversary and meets some of its staff, visitors, plants and creatures
“Give me a sleeping bag and I’ll happily sleep here overnight,” says Kim Mackintosh as she wanders amid the vibrant flora of the Mediterranean biome at the Eden Project on the eve of the tourist attraction’s 25th anniversary.
Loupe in hand, the leader of the biome’s horticulture team is marvelling at an array of plants that have recently come into bloom, tenderly examining the yellow furry buds of an Acacia glaucoptera before flogging a Grevillea flower to dispense its rich, honey-flavoured nectar.
Kim Mackintosh inspects the ‘kangaroo paw’ of an Anigozanthos through her loupe. All photographs by Jonny Weeks
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From fluffy owlets to rosy-hued flamingos, Claire Rosen’s portraits of live birds took her on a journey that touched on colonialism, wallpaper design … and chickens
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Fearing that extreme weather threatened its epic breaks, Oriente Salvaje is piloting the first surf insurance policy to protect livelihoods and ecosystems
In the late 1990s in El Salvador, Rodrigo Barraza went in search of every surfer’s dream: a pristine wave, far from the crowds. Down a rough dirt track hours from any city, he found it: a little-known surf spot on the country’s eastern shores, where long lines of waves form a crisp right-hand break, surrounded by thousands of hectares of tropical forest.
“I fell in love with the place,” says Barraza. In 2004, he opened a small hotel there, and along with some surfing friends, founded a tourism association. They developed sustainable tourism standards and committed to protect the surrounding biodiverse ecosystemof rare dry tropical forest, rivers and mangroves. They called it Oriente Salvaje – the “wild east”.
Oriente Salvaje is known by surfers for its world-class breaks, Las Flores and Punto Mango
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Drosopigi, the Mani, Greece: This rocky region’s abundance of flora takes the breath away – not least a long and winding trail of Chios chamomile
The Greek name for this southernmost tip of the Peloponnese is linked to a Byzantine fort at Cape Tigani (called Megali Maina), but it may well also draw on the region’s desolate, mountainous rocky country that persists throughout the entire peninsula.
The fierce Maniot people were well described by Patrick Leigh Fermor in his book Mani (1958), but the region has been more recently celebrated in Charles Foster’s brilliant The Edges of the World, published in January. In history the Mani was known variously for the relentless and sometimes centuries-long vendettas between its local clans, as a fertile recruiting ground for Mediterranean piracy and as an early outpost for Greek liberation from Ottoman rule.
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Researchers project that reduced activity could contribute to half a million additional premature deaths annually by 2050
Rising temperatures are making physical activity undesirable and even dangerous in many parts of the world, and as global heating worsens, it will further affect how much people are able to move.
Researchers analysed data from 156 countries between 2000 and 2022 and modelled how rising temperatures may affect physical activity globally by 2050.
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Exclusive: Claire Earley’s son Rex spent six weeks in hospital after contracting E coli from contaminated lake
Realtime pollution alerts are needed across Windermere urgently, campaigners have said, as the mother of a seven-year-old boy who kayaked on the lake described how he nearly died after contracting a dangerous strain of E coli from contaminated water.
Claire Earley’s son Rex spent six weeks in hospital, and underwent two emergency operations, after a family kayaking trip on Windermere last August.
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The detection at a popular park of ‘one of the worst invasive species to reach Australia’ is causing concern that suppression efforts are cracking
The Newmarket women’s football side was gearing up for its clash against crosstown club New Farm United in Brisbane’s inner northern suburbs on Saturday morning when a message pinged in the team’s group chat.
Just hours before kick-off, the game was postponed, to a date undetermined.
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Falling costs and government incentives make solar an attractive option for many, reducing need for gas
After prices of liquefied natural gas surged to record highs after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, millions of people in Pakistan were repeatedly left without electricity. An intense heatwave and gas shortages amid record-breaking prices resulted in power cuts across the country.
But people soon started to realise there was an alternative. The falling costs of solar panels and generous government incentives to feed excess power back to the grid made rooftop solar an attractive option.
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Water shortages and rising heat is putting pressure on beer ingredients, but US brewers and farmers are adapting
With St Patrick’s Day this week, millions of Americans are raising a glass. Beer remains the country’s most popular alcoholic drink with more than 6bn gallons consumed each year. But from water shortages to rising temperatures, the climate crisis is putting pressure on beer’s most essential ingredients.
At Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon, beer is either stacked high in warehouse rows or racing down a canning line and assembled into 12-packs. Inside the cavernous cellars, enormous 6,000-gallon tanks hold the latest batches in progress.
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