Bruce Friedrich argues the only way to tackle the world's insatiable but damaging craving for meat is like-for-like replacements like cultivated and plant-based meat

For someone aiming to end the global livestock industry, Bruce Friedrich begins his new book - called Meat - in disarming fashion: "I'm not here to tell anyone what to eat. You won't find vegetarian or vegan recipes in this book, and you won't find a single sentence attempting to convince you to eat differently. This book isn't about policing your plate."

There's more. Friedrich, a vegan for almost four decades, says meat is "humanity's favourite food".

Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex: Look out for the alders - they're remarkable trees and one of our first to come to life as winter recedes

A few wet weeks have left the ground here sodden, making walking a challenge. It doesn't help that my wellies have sprung a leak. On the rainiest days, I find my range reduced to a few splashy circuits of the village fields, the nearby Downs receding into hanging cloud.

Nevertheless, there are signs of drier times to come. Today, my eye is drawn by a line of alders (Alnus glutinosa) that marks the course of a stream. Their graceful silhouettes are bathed in a distinctive maroon haze. Up close, the cause resolves into delicate clarity: purple catkins dangling in bunches from the tip of each twig. Formed at the end of last summer, they have recently begun to lengthen and unclench, coaxed by warming days. Soon (and well before the tree's round leaves unfurl), they will split open, revealing hundreds of vivid yellow stamens: tiny, lantern guides through the murk and mire of late winter.

Soaring temperatures, heat at altitude and hot summer nights combine to create one of south-eastern Australia's 'most significant' heatwaves

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Heatwaves and hot days during an Australian summer may seem unremarkable. Days spent at the beach, sunburn and mosquitoes are part of the national psyche, along with outback pubs serving crisp lager as relief from searing afternoon heat.

But when the opal mining town of Andamooka (population 262) in the far north of South Australia reached 50 degrees on Thursday, it was only the eighth time in recorded history anywhere in Australia.

Inspired by YouTube creators, some people are limiting beef to a handful of 'feast days' a year to cut their climate impact

"I love beef," says Vlad Luca, 25. But unlike most other self-proclaimed steak lovers, Vlad eats it only four times a year, on designated "beef days".

The "beef days" phenomenon has been popularised by the brothers John and Hank Green, known collectively as vlogbrothers on YouTube. John, 48, is better known for his YA fiction, including The Fault in Our Stars, while Hank, 45, is a self-described science communicator and entrepreneur.

A wave of affordable Chinese-made EVs is accelerating the shift away from petrol cars, challenging long‑held assumptions about how transport decarbonisation unfolds

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Last year, almost every new car sold in Norway, the nature-loving country flush with oil wealth, was fully electric. In prosperous Denmark, which was all-in on petrol and diesel cars until just before Covid, sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) reached a share of 68%. In California, the share of zero-emissions vehicles hit 20%. And at least every third new car now bought by the Dutch, Finns, Belgians and Swedes burns no fuel.

These figures, which would have felt fanciful just five years ago, show the rich world leading the shift away from cars that pump out toxic gas and planet-heating pollutants. But a more startling trend is that electric car sales are also racing ahead in many developing countries. While China is known for its embrace of electric vehicles (EVs), demand has also soared in emerging markets from South America to south-east Asia. BEV sales in Turkey have caught up with the EU's, data published this week shows.

The Fukushima towns frozen in time: nature has thrived since the nuclear disaster but what happens if humans return?

The UK government didn't want you to see this report on ecosystem collapse. I'm not surprised

The 16-month battle to reveal the truth about Sydney Water's poo balls

Powering up: how Ethiopia is becoming an unlikely leader in the electric vehicle revolution

'My Tesla has become ordinary': Turkey catches up with EU in electric car sales

The electric vehicle revolution is still on course - don't let your loathing of Elon Musk stop you joining up

As rivers swell and homes are cut off, scientists say UK winter rainfall is already 20 years ahead of predictions

When flooding hit the low-lying Somerset Levels in 2014, it took two months for the waters to rise. This week it took two days, said Rebecca Horsington, chair of the Flooding on the Levels Action Group and a born-and-bred resident. A fierce barrage of storms from the Atlantic has drenched south-west England in January, saturating soils and supercharging rivers.

Plastics make up the majority of litter across the country. In the absence of regulation, the public are taking matters into their own hands

• Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household's carbon footprint

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Neil Blake weighs a paper bag of fake grass fragments he has collected from a stormwater gutter near Darebin Creek in Melbourne's north.

Over the past three years Blake has conducted 56 collections of synthetic turf in the waterway alongside the KP Hardiman Reserve hockey pitch.

Experts say administration has launched 'war on all fronts' to undo environmental rules - here are the key areas at risk

In his first year back in office, Donald Trump has fundamentally reshaped the Environmental Protection Agency, initiating nearly 70 actions to undo rules protecting ecosystems and the climate.

The agency's wide-ranging assault on the environment will put people at risk, threatening air and water quality, increasing harmful chemical exposure, and worsening global warming, experts told the Guardian. The changes amount to "a war on all fronts that this administration has launched against our health and the safety of our communities and the quality of our environment," said Matthew Tejada, the former director of the EPA's environmental justice program.

Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire: No finches yet and only a single thrush, but tuning into January's sounds has revealed that nature is beginning to stir

If my teenage son hadn't mentioned it one grey morning this week, I'm not sure I'd have noticed, having been too caught up in the January doldrums. But he was right: there's a new fullness to the soundscape here on our urban housing estate. "The birds just sound louder," he said, scanning the rooftops, "more enthusiastic."

"Go on then, what are they?" he grinned, giving me permission to perform my party trick. I closed my eyes and listened. Sparrow. Robin. Wood pigeon. Wren. Blue tits - a bickering winter flock of them - and, there, the see-see-see of long-tailed tits. "Which one makes this sound?" he asked, and whistled a long, descending note like something falling from the sky. "They're my favourite." "Starling!" I said. Right on cue, one made that exact sound somewhere above us, confirming his perfect impression.

More than 300 brown hairstreak butterfly eggs discovered near Llandeilo this winter after decade of decline

Record numbers of eggs of the rare brown hairstreak butterfly have been found in south-west Wales after landowners stopped flailing hedges every year.

The butterfly lays its eggs on blackthorn every summer. But when land managers and farmers mechanically cut hedges every autumn, thousands of the eggs are unknowingly destroyed.

This week's best wildlife photographs from around the world

From a renovated Victorian village house in Hampshire to a new-build apartment in south London

When temperatures drop suddenly, trapped water can freeze and expand, splitting trunks with a gunshot-like sound

During the recent cold spell in the northern US, meteorologists issued warnings about exploding trees.

A tree's first line of defence against freezing is its bark, which provides efficient insulation. In cold conditions, trees also enter a form of hibernation, with changes at a cellular level: cells dehydrate, harden and shrink, increasing their sugar concentration. This is the botanical equivalent of adding antifreeze, helping to prevent the formation of ice crystals.

I heard this huff, then a stomp. A growl that sounded like a death warning

Last November, I'd been out for the evening with friends who were visiting Los Angeles. Afterwards, I checked the notifications on my phone. There was a motion alert from one of the cameras around my house. It had captured a big black bear nosing around my bins.

We get wildlife here: raccoons, skunks. But I'd never had a bear rummaging through my trash. I watched as it turned things over, then wandered off. I assumed he had left.

Eleven endangered skinks released into a gated community in Victoria's Alpine national park will soon become 13, when Omeo, one of the females, gives birth in March. One of Australia's only alpine lizards, guthega skinks live on 'sky islands' above 1,600 metres in two isolated alpine locations - Bogong high plains in Victoria and Mount Kosciuszko in NSW. 'They're extremely vulnerable, given where they live,' says skink specialist Dr Zak Atkins, director of Snowline Ecology. As the climate warms, their alpine zone is retracting, and there's nowhere higher for them to go

• Nursing a skink: endangered alpine lizard numbers set to rise after Omeo falls pregnant in Victoria

Minnesota housing project to draw energy from water stored deep underground, 45 years on from city's initial research

Nearly half a century ago, the US Department of Energy launched a clean energy experiment beneath the University of Minnesota with a simple goal: storing hot water for months at a time in an aquifer more than 100 metres below ground.

The idea of the seasonal thermal energy storage was to tuck away excess heat produced in summer, then use it in the winter to warm buildings.

Colombian city launched its first clean air zone in one of its poorest neighbourhoods and has plans for green spaces too

Every Sunday in Bogotá, streets across the city are closed to cars and transformed into urban parks. Shirtless rollerbladers with boomboxes drift leisurely in figures of eight, Lycra-clad cyclists zoom downhill and young children wobble nervously as they pedal on bikes for the first time.

This is perhaps the most visible component of a multipronged plan to clean up the Colombian capital's air. At the turn of the century, Bogotá was one of Latin America's most polluted cities, with concentrations of harmful particulates at seven times the World Health Organization's limits. In the last decade the city of 8 million has started to turn that around, cutting air pollution by 24% between 2018 and 2024.

Fifteen years after a tsunami caused the Fukushima nuclear accident, only bears, raccoons and boar are seen on the streets. But the authorities and some locals want people to move back

Norio Kimura pauses to gaze through the dirt-flecked window of Kumamachi primary school in Fukushima. Inside, there are still textbooks lying on the desks, pencil cases are strewn across the floor; empty bento boxes that were never taken home.

Along the corridor, shoes line the route the children took when they fled, some still in their indoor plimsolls, as their town was rocked by a magnitude-9 earthquake on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 which went on to cause the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chornobyl.

Emergency pumps are deployed in attempt to stop water inundating homes around River Parrett

• 'Like a sea out there': flooded Somerset residents wonder how water can be managed

Since medieval monks started draining and managing the Somerset Levels, humans have struggled to live and work alongside water.

"At the moment it feels like a losing battle," said Mike Stanton, the chair of the Somerset Rivers Authority. "Intense rainfall is hitting us more often because of climate change. It may be that in the next 50 years, perhaps in the next 20, some homes around here will have to be abandoned."

Pan Europe found several pesticide residues in 85% of apples, with some showing traces of up to seven chemicals

Environmental groups have raised the alarm after finding toxic "pesticide cocktails" in apples sold across Europe.

Pan Europe, a coalition of NGOs campaigning against pesticide use, had about 60 apples bought in 13 European countries - including France, Spain, Italy and Poland - analysed for chemical residues.

Projects in development expected to grow global capacity by nearly 50% amid growing concern over impact on planet

The US is leading a huge global surge in new gas-fired power generation that will cause a major leap in planet-heating emissions, with this record boom driven by the expansion of energy-hungry datacenters to service artificial intelligence, according to a new forecast.

This year is set to shatter the annual record for new gas power additions around the world, with projects in development expected to grow existing global gas capacity by nearly 50%, a report by Global Energy Monitor (GEM) found.

Despite no criminal charges being brought against them, four officers have been detained since the MV Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge, killing six workers

Several crew members of a ship that collided with a bridge in Baltimore almost two years ago are still being held in the US by federal authorities despite the fact that no criminal charges have been brought against them.

In the early hours of 26 March 2024, the MV Dali departed the port of Baltimore bound for Sri Lanka. While navigating the Fort McHenry channel, the 1,000ft-long Singapore-flagged cargo vessel lost power before striking the bridge. The impact resulted in the deaths of six people who were working on the bridge at the time.

Judgment in The Hague orders Netherlands to do more to protect Caribbean people in its territory from impacts of climate crisis

The Dutch government discriminated against people in one of its most vulnerable territories by not helping them adapt to climate change, a court has found.

The judgment, announced on Wednesday in The Hague, chastises the Netherlands for treating people on the island of Bonaire, in the Caribbean, differently to inhabitants of the European part of the country and for not doing its fair share to cut national emissions.

Light scattering creates the shade we see when we look skyward, and studies show the process varies around the world

On holiday the sky may look a deeper shade of blue than even the clearest summer day at home. Some places, including Cape Town in South Africa and Briançon in France, pride themselves on the blueness of their skies. But is there really any difference?

The blue of the sky is the product of Rayleigh scattering, which affects light more at the blue end of the spectrum. The blue we see is just the blue component of scattered white sunlight.

Wellington and Wiveliscombe, Somerset: This movable pagan feast can be celebrated very differently, but it's all to thank the apple trees and fire up their sap

Old apple tree, we wassail thee,
And hope that thou wilt bear
Hatfuls, capfuls and three bushel bagfuls
And a little heap under the stairs!

We are standing around a little crab apple tree by the side of Wiveliscombe village hall, singing our hearts out between the car park and the high street. It's Old Twelfth Night, and in the orchards and gardens of the West Country, people are banging pots, swilling cider, hanging bits of toast in trees and yelling "wassail!".

Monarch says he has remained focused despite early criticisms of his beliefs, in new film Finding Harmony: A King's Vision

King Charles has revealed he "wasn't going to be diverted" from his environmental campaigning despite criticism in the past in a new documentary showcasing his philosophy of "Harmony".

In the Amazon Prime Video film, his first project with a streaming platform, Charles recalls past attacks on his outspokenness on the environment, saying: "I just felt this was the approach that I was going to stick to. A course I set and I wasn't going to be diverted from."

Finding herself in charge of her sick husband's clipper, a self-taught working-class teenager overcame storms, icebergs and a disloyal first mate to get her ship to safety

No one knows exactly what Mary Ann Patten said in September 1856 when she convinced a crew on the verge of mutiny to accept her command as captain. What is known is that Patten, who was 19 and pregnant, was a force to be reckoned with.

After taking the helm from her sick husband in the middle of a ferocious storm off the coast of Cape Horn, the notoriously hazardous tip of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago off southern Chile, she successfully put down the mutiny and navigated her way to safety through a sea of icebergs.

Popularity of EVs in country is part of global trend of emerging markets spurning fossil fuel cars at surprising speeds

When Berke Astarcıoğlu bought a BMW i3 in 2016, he was one of just 44 people in a country of 80 million to buy a battery electric vehicle (BEV) that year. By the time he bought a Tesla in 2023, BEVs were no longer a complete oddity in Turkey, making up 7% of new car sales.

Fast-forward two years and electric cars are selling so fast that Turkey has caught up with the EU in its rate of adoption. Its market is now the fourth largest in Europe, behind Germany, the UK and France.

After debris balls closed Sydney beaches in October 2024, Guardian Australia reported they could be linked to sewage outfalls. Authorities were less keen to talk

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Last week, after torrential rain in Sydney, fresh poo balls washed up on the beach at Malabar, the closest beach to the problematic Malabar sewage treatment plant.

Signs were erected on the beach warning people not to touch the "debris balls" or swim. But authorities didn't let the wider community know. There were no other warnings issued by Sydney Water, the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) or the state government.

It took an FOI request to bring this national security assessment to light. For 'doomsayers' like us, it is the ultimate vindication

I know it's almost impossible to turn your eyes away from the Trump show, but that's the point. His antics, ever-grosser and more preposterous, are designed to keep him in our minds, to crowd out other issues. His insatiable craving for attention is a global-threat multiplier. You can't help wondering whether there's anything he wouldn't do to dominate the headlines.

But we must tear ourselves away from the spectacle, for there are other threats just as critical that also require our attention. Just because you're not hearing about them doesn't mean they've gone away.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

The heatwave in Melbourne and Adelaide this week is likely to become the norm. We should prepare now

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On Tuesday, Australia's second-largest city baked through one of its hottest days since modern instrumental records began in 1910. Several Melbourne suburbs topped 45C. The country's fifth-largest city, Adelaide, reached that temperature on Monday. Its residents then suffered through their hottest night ever, with a minimum of about 34C.

Remote communities were even harder hit. It was 48.9C in Hopetoun and Walpeup in Victoria's north-west, and 49.6C in Renmark, over the South Australian border. An out-of-control bushfire burned in the Otways region, south-west of Melbourne, near areas that just two weeks ago faced flash flooding.

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It's not just Tunbridge Wells - a country famous around the world for its rain is in danger of self-imposed drought

You get up and go to the loo, only to find the flush doesn't work. You try the shower, except nothing comes out. You want a glass of water, but on turning the tap there is not a drop. Your day stumbles on, stripped of its essentials: no washing hands, no cleaning up the baby, neither tea nor coffee, no easy way to do the dishes or the laundry. Dirt accumulates; tempers fray.

The water company texts: we are so sorry; colleagues are working to restore connection; everything should soon be normal. You want to believe them, but the more it's repeated, the more it becomes a kind of hold music. There's no supply the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. Each morning brings with it the same chest-tightening question: what will happen today? Buckets and bottles don't stop you feeling grubby and smelly, or from noticing the taint on your family and friends and neighbours. You're not quite the people you thought you were and nothing feels normal.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Joe Yates, Prof Philip J Landrigan, Prof Jennifer Kirwan and Prof Jamie Davies respond to an article on doubts raised about studies on microplastics in the human body

While it may be a belated Christmas present for the petrochemical industry, your article ('A bombshell': doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body, 13 January) was less surprising to the scientific community, where constructive debate around microplastic detection in humans has been ongoing for some time. Such debate is entirely normal - and essential - for scientific inquiry.

New and novel methods must be tried, tested, critiqued, improved and tried again. Science is incremental and gradual - unlike the uncapped production and pollution of plastics, which contain thousands of hazardous chemicals. Decades of robust evidence demonstrates the harms that these inflict on people and planet.

Wolves killed more than 2,100 reindeer in Finland last year, and herders are blaming the Ukraine war

Juha Kujala no longer knows how many reindeer will return to his farm from the forest each December. The 54-year-old herder releases his animals into the wilderness on the 830-mile Finnish-Russian border each spring to grow fat on lichens, grass and mushrooms, just as his ancestors have done for generations.

But since 2022, grisly discoveries of reindeer skeletons on the forest floor have disrupted this ancient way of life. The culprits, according to Kujala: wolves from Russia.

Conservationists hail the 'desperately needed' measures and urge greater protection after up to 11% of endangered Tapanuli orangutans wiped out

The floods and landslides that tore through Indonesia's fragile Batang Toru ecosystem in November 2024 - killing up to 11% of the world's Tapanuli orangutan population - prompted widespread scrutiny of the extractive companies operating in the area at the time of the ecological catastrophe.

For weeks, investigators searched for evidence that the companies may have damaged the Batang Toru and Garoga watersheds before the disaster, which washed torrents of mud and logs into villages, claiming the lives of more than 1,100 people.

Experts call for tighter regulation as GPS tracking reveals how people's behaviour affects the lives of some of the world's largest birds

• Photographs by Roberto García-Roa

Many people look up to admire the silhouette of raptors, some of the planet's largest birds, soaring through seemingly empty skies. But increasingly, research shows us that this fascination runs both ways. From high above, these birds are watching us too.

Thanks to the development of tiny GPS tracking devices attached to their bodies, researchers are getting millions of data points on the day-to-day lives of these apex predators of the skies, giving us greater insight into where they hunt and rest, and how they die.

Virunga park ranger says babies are well cared for by mother Mafuko but high infant mortality makes first weeks critical

It was noon by the time Jacques Katutu first saw the newborn mountain gorillas. Cradled in the arms of their mother, Mafuko, the tiny twins clung to her body for warmth in the forest clearing in Virunga national park, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Katutu, head of gorilla monitoring in Virunga, has seen dozens of newborns in his 15 years as a ranger. But, he tells the Guardian, even he was touched by the sight of the fragile infant males, who face serious obstacles if they are to become silverbacks one day.

Canada has reached a tentative deal for 30 belugas in an amusement park to be shipped to four aquariums in US

• 'It's heartbreaking': how 30 captive beluga whales have become pawns in row over animal cruelty

Before boarding the plane, the travellers will be given a dose of Valium to calm their nerves. For some, it will be the first time they've flown. Others have logged thousands of miles over the Pacific Ocean. Like most weary and anxious passengers, they will be offered minimal personal space on board and food isn't included in their fare.

But for these jet-setters, the tight quarters and minimal refreshments aren't meant to maximize airline profits: they're meant to keep them safe.

The variety and scope of entries to the global Walk of Water photography contest reflect the intimate connection between water and humanity

Described by one researcher as looking 'already dead', the enigmatic creatures are one of the least understood species on the planet

It looks more like a worn sock than a fearsome predator. It moves slower than an escalator. By most accounts, it is a clumsy and near-sightless relic drifting in the twilight waters of the Arctic, lazily searching for food scraps.

The Greenland shark, an animal one researcher (lovingly) said, "looks like it's already dead", is also one of the least understood, biologically enigmatic species on the planet.

The Andaman coast was one of very few places in the world with a viable population but then dead dugongs began washing up. Now half have gone

A solitary figure stands on the shore of Thailand's Tang Khen Bay. The tide is slowly rising over the expanse of sandy beach, but the man does not seem to notice. His eyes are not fixed on the sea, but on the small screen clutched between his hands.

About 600 metres offshore, past the shadowy fringe of coral reef, his drone hovers over the murky sea, focused on a whirling grey shape: Miracle, the local dugong, is back.

How long does it take for a Frosty Fruit to melt in a heatwave? Guardian Australia sacrificed three ice blocks in Melbourne, Sydney and Ouyen, where the temperature hit 48C on Tuesday. It was the fifth day in a row that temperatures have exceeded 40C, with four more forecast to follow

• Explainer: What happens to the human body in 49C heat? Australians are finding out

Jarno Coone, the winner of the international 'world's ugliest lawn' competition, says he doesn't let his garden grow wild to annoy his neighbours in the regional Victorian town of Kyneton. He says he is 'proud to get the message out there for water conservation and living more harmoniously with nature'. 'I really do believe it is better for the environment,' he says

This week's best wildlife photographs from around the world