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Industry figures warn of national security risk and call for ministers to address impact of extreme weather, inflation and Iran war
Britain is “sleepwalking into a food crisis” caused by extreme weather, inflation and the impacts of the Iran war – and the government is failing to take the threat seriously, food experts have said.
Farmers are facing severe strain from the current heatwave following a dry spring, with many crops likely to yield less as temperatures rise beyond their tolerance. Livestock are also suffering heat stress and there is a rising risk of wildfires. Economic losses are likely to be measured in the hundreds of millions of pounds.
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Global temperature record could be broken as soon as 2027, with El Niño expected later this year
A record-breaking hot year is almost certain by 2030 as the climate crisis intensifies, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has warned.
With an El Niño event expected later this year, the global temperature record could fall as soon as 2027.
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The WasteBar food truck hopes the eye-catching deal will change people’s attitude to waste in the Netherlands
Using cigarette butts to buy buttery Dutch pancakes? That is the deal one food truck is offering at festivals in the Netherlands as a way to get people thinking about litter.
Cigarette butts are the most common form of plastic waste in the world, with more than 4.5tn butts produced every year. In the Netherlands the estimated figure is in the hundreds of millions.
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Investigators are still searching for what caused the recent deaths of a mother and her calf, but conservationists say the animal’s shrinking habitat may be the first place to look
The two elephants were found dead in the Indonesian province of Bengkulu, in an area of “production forest” in southern Sumatra. The mother and her calf were lying side by side with their tusks still intact.
Unlikely to be poachers, the cause of their deaths – and that of a tiger nearby – at the end of April is still being investigated but conservationists say this is not an isolated case. It is estimated that seven wild elephants have died in Bengkulu since 2018.
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Nature groups urge people to avoid unauthorised areas to protect birds during nesting season
Nature groups have pleaded with swimmers to give wildlife a wide berth after dozens of people swam in a nature pond on Hampstead Heath among nests of baby birds.
Swans and their 12-day-old cygnets were disturbed by hordes of splashing revellers in the north London park on Monday as London reached record 35C temperatures. In one video, a swan was seen poking an unhatched egg with its beak after it fell into the water during the chaos.
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Caistor St Edmund, Norfolk: Adult swallows travel across the world to breed in Britain’s supposedly temperate climate. Instead, this week’s temperatures have been deadly
Mouth gaping, the swallow chick leans perilously over the edge of the nest cup. It is young, just a scrap of body, and at least a week away from being ready to fledge. But under the tin roof the heat is rising, becoming unbearable.
The chick perches on the edge of the nest, opening and closing its mouth, trying to stay cool in the absence of sweat glands. Then, it’s hard to tell if it overbalances, seeking cooler air, or makes a decision. Either way, it plunges down, dropping with no hope of flight. Somehow it misses the hard breezeblock ledge, and fortunately lands on the horse bedding.
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At least nine people have died in recent days as people have tried to cool off in Britain’s waterways
Water safety experts have warned about the dangers of outdoor swimming after a number of drownings in recent days as people try to escape soaring temperatures by cooling off in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and other bodies of water.
Emergency services have reported at least nine deaths because of water-related incidents in the past few days, seven of them young people, as Britain’s heatwave sends crowds of people to the seaside and other swimming spots.
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Amy is worried about microplastics. Melanie says she can’t bin everything. Whose argument is toxic? You decide
•Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror
I want to live a healthier life too, but removing all plastics is unrealistic and unaffordable
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More Americans are using small solar panels in their back yards or balconies as a clean way to cut their electric bills
If you feel like your electricity bill just keeps climbing, you aren’t imagining it. Since 2020, US residential energy prices have surged by about 30%, making power the largest household energy expense behind gasoline, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
But for residents like Alex Curtis, the days of feeling powerless against rising costs are coming to an end. Curtis is waging a war on his electric bill, and his new weapon of choice is a lightweight, thin-film solar panel.
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Calaminarian grassland is a rare habitat where plants thrive in soils contaminated by heavy metals. But should these toxic meadows be protected or allowed to fade away?
At first, the small purple flowers are hard to spot in the weak May sunshine. Slowly the drifts of delicate mountain pansies, along with the white rosettes of alpine pennycress, begin to jump out, scattered across an area little bigger than a football pitch, on the banks of the River Allen in Northumberland.
This is a pocket of calaminarian grassland, an increasingly rare habitat where specialist plants called metallophytes have adapted to live in soils deeply contaminated by heavy metals, the legacy of more than 1,000 years of lead mining.
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