The Hummlan Hive — Sustainability Weekly Digest

On Friday 14 August — the same day Prime Minister Andy Burnham publicly acknowledged that the climate crisis is behind the hundreds of wildfires ripping across the UK — his government launched a consultation that could cut the country's electric vehicle (EV) sales targets by nearly half. Under the current "zero-emission vehicles" (ZEV) mandate, battery EVs must make up a rising share of new car sales: 33% in 2026, rising to 80% in 2030. The new consultation offers options to leave the 2030 target unchanged, or cut it to 70%, 60% — or as low as 50% of all new cars.

The timing is striking. The same week saw:

• •The military deployed to help fight wildfires, with dozens of homes destroyed and people injured, including in Stourbridge in the West Midlands.
• •A ban on the sale of disposable barbecues and the activation of the national alert system to warn people in England and Wales of fire risk.
• •Burnham's own words: "We cannot accept this as the new normal. This isn't happening in isolation. Much of England and Wales is in drought and we are in another period of extreme heat. Farmers are watching crops fail and firefighters have faced hundreds of wildfires in a matter of weeks. This is what climate change looks like, here and now."

Meanwhile, more than 50 green organisations — including Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth, the Women's Institute, Uplift and Green New Deal Rising — wrote to Burnham urging him to "show leadership" and name the cause of the crisis. Their letter points out that after chairing a COBRA meeting on the heatwave and drought, his statement focused on disposable barbecues and did not mention the climate crisis once.

Almost three-quarters of England — and the whole of Wales — is now in drought, and the water that millions of households rely on is running low. Environment Agency data from 11 August shows five key reservoirs at "exceptionally low" levels:

• •Wimbleball (South West Water, Somerset): 46% full
• •Clatworthy (Somerset): 48%
• •Hanningfield (Essex): 56%
• •Clywedog (Powys): 56%
• •Dove group (Derbyshire): 69%

Across England, total reservoir levels have fallen to 66%— down from 69% the week before and nearly 14 percentage points below what is expected for this time of year. Of the 32 reservoirs the Environment Agency classifies as strategically important or geographically representative, just four are at normal levels (Draycote, Bewl, Roadford and Vyrnwy). The National Hydrological Monitoring Programme calls July's aridity "unprecedented" and warns that "widespread below-normal to exceptionally low" water flows are likely to persist well into the autumn, with "further deterioration" possible.

Meanwhile, Thames Water — which supplies 16 million customers in London and the Thames valley — is preparing to restart the UK's only desalination plant at Beckton, east London, "by the end of the year". The plant:

• •Cost £270 million to install when it fully opened in 2011; its total cost is now estimated at £500 million.
• •Has run only five times in 15 years, providing 7.2 billion litres of drinking water — about seven days' worth of London's demand — in that entire period.
• •Won't be ready until winter, long after the current drought is likely to have passed — to "support reservoir recovery over the winter", the company says.

Hosepipe bans are now in force across much of the UK, and the prime minister is due to decide Thames Water's future in the coming weeks.

California — the largest agricultural producer and the largest user of paraquat in the United States — has banned the highly toxic herbicide. It is the second US state to do so, after Vermont, and the decision follows a 2024 state law requiring regulators to act.

Scientists are predicting that the current El Niño — on course to be the strongest in 150 years "by a mind-blowing margin"— will peak at the worst possible time for the world's largest tropical rainforest: the end of the dry season, between October and December, when rivers are at their lowest and the undergrowth is most likely to be tinder dry.

The Amazon is already reeling. Human-driven climate disruption is relentlessly heating the planet and amplifying extreme weather; now the El Niño drought threatens to land on top of that, with a delayed rainy season raising the risk of widespread fire in a forest already damaged by heat and deforestation. As one Guardian analysis puts it, the combination "should worry us all" — not just those who live there.

The broader picture this month:

• •Europe: hottest June and July in history, with wildfires in France and Greece and water shortages in the Seine, Rhine and Danube basins; three-quarters of England in drought.
• •Asia: record heat in South Korea and Japan; Typhoon Dolphin turned Shanghai's streets into rivers, forced more than 1 million people to evacuate; floods killed more than 100 people in India.
• •North America: "out of control" wildfires forced tens of thousands to flee British Columbia.
• •Middle East & Africa: the UAE registered 51.2°C in Al Dhafra; the UN predicts a severe hit to food production in Africa.

Britain's farmers are adapting — fast — to a climate their crops weren't designed for. This summer's heat and drought brought the earliest UK cereals harvest in at least 20 years, according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, and the second hot, dry and windy summer in a row for many growers. The Guardian spoke to farmers across the country about how they're coping:

• •Soil health first: farmers in the Nature Friendly Farming Network are improving soil so it holds more water, and planting bigger, bushier hedges and more trees to "slow the flow of air down" — as Cambridgeshire farmer Martin Lines puts it, this summer has been "like a hot hairdryer on everything... it just saps the moisture out".
• •Water storage: ponds, collection tanks and farm reservoirs are being installed — though they are costly, need planning permission and aren't always enough for long dry spells.
• •Drought-resistant crops: growers are trialling varieties that can cope with less water.
• •Beavers: nature's own water engineers are increasingly part of the picture — beaver dams slow water flow, raise water tables and keep streams running through dry periods, helping both crops and wildlife.
• •The other side of the coin: the same techniques (healthy soil, dams, ponds) also slow floodwater — adaptation for drought doubles as protection against the floods that increasingly follow.

Humpback whales are back in Rio de Janeiro — and for the first time in living memory, they're being spotted inside Guanabara Bay, with at least 18 sightings this year alone. The whales have been returning to Brazil's coast in growing numbers as populations recover from centuries of whaling, and tourists are flocking to see them: whale-watching operators have started running outings from Rio itself, with boats regularly encountering pairs of the 50-tonne animals breaching against the backdrop of the city's jungle-cloaked mountains.

But the recovery brings a new tension. While the return of the humpbacks is celebrated as a conservation success, some marine biologists are asking whether the booming tourism that now surrounds them helps or hinders. Whales migrate along the Brazilian coast between June and November, from feeding grounds around South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands to the warmer breeding waters of the Abrolhos Bank — and unregulated boats, noise and crowding can stress the very animals people come to admire.