The Guardian Environment

• World must reject climate culture wars or face economic ruin, says UN’s Stiell

  Warning by United Nations climate chief comes as EU data shows August 2026 was joint hottest month ever

  Attempts to stoke a climate crisis culture war must be rejected or the world will face economic disaster, the UN’s climate chief has warned.

  Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, warned that this year’s “hot as hell” summer had killed tens of thousands of people in Europe alone and “hammered” infrastructure, businesses and economics, costing a likely €180bn (£155bn), as well as leading to forced migration around the world.

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• Two more people arrested over ‘mountain of illegal waste’ dumped in Oxfordshire

  A total of six people apprehended as clean-up of rubbish stacked 10 metres high cost about £6m

  Two men have been arrested after fly-tippers dumped a “mountain of illegal waste”, stacked 10 metres high, in Oxfordshire.

  Hundreds of tonnes of rubbish appeared in a field between the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington in November last year. The waste tip was so large that removing it could cost more than the local council’s annual budget, the area’s MP said.

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• Can an entire Arctic ecosystem evolve to adapt to the climate crisis?

  In the first project of its kind, scientists are trying to answer if the future of Alaska’s streams and tundra may depend not on survival of the fittest but on how species adapttogether

  On Alaska’s North Slope, scientists tread carefully across clumps of tussock grasses toward a fast-flowing stream draining the imposing Brooks Range of ice and snow. Near Galbraith Creek, they string out a mist net for white-crowned sparrows. The birds have recently arrived from southerly latitudes, intent on feasting on the insects that will soon descend on the tundra like storm clouds.

  The Arctic summer is short-lived, and sparrows have only a few weeks to establish territories, find mates, lay eggs and raise their chicks on a steady diet of bugs. From every ensnared bird, the scientists collect blood, feather and faecal samples to see what they are eating and how that changes over the summer.

  Galbraith Creek on Alaska’s North Slope

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• Polanski calls for report on ecosystem collapse to be published in full

  Green leader says ministers must stop ‘hiding the truth’ about threat to UK security from climate and nature crisis

  Zack Polanski has challenged Andy Burnham’s government to publish an unredacted version of an explosive report by the UK’s spy chiefs that found the collapse of overseas ecosystems would have catastrophic consequences for the UK’s national security.

  The Green party leader in England said the prime minister should come clean about the scale and impact of the climate and nature crisis and called on the government to publish in full the report that warns the UK faces devastating security consequences.

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• Birdwatch: the avian equivalent of a catwalk model, blue cranes are under threat

  Numbers of the exquisitely graceful species are falling amid loss of food supply and habitat

  Few birds are quite as elegant as the blue crane. As I watched a pair feeding alongside a busy road in South Africa, against the rather incongruous backdrop of a herd of cows, I was struck by their sheer beauty. With a slender body, curved neck, long legs, elongated tail plumes and a subtle, dove-grey plumage, this bird really is the avian equivalent of a catwalk model.

  But not all is well for the blue crane. It has the smallest global range of any of the world’s 15 crane species: apart from an isolated population in Namibia, almost all are found in South Africa, where it is celebrated as the national bird.

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