Scientists call for incentives to preserve vegetation as study highlights benefits of plentiful planting in London

Your front garden could be a first line of defence against air pollution, according to a year-long field study in two London neighbourhoods.

The UK’s 26m gardens cover nearly 5% of the country’s land area, but they account for a much larger share in urban areas. In Greater London, domestic gardens cover 41% of the city, compared with 27% of Cardiff and 23% of Edinburgh.

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© Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian

© Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian

© Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian

Angela Eagle tells industry ‘people are sick of excuses’ as pollution levels remain high despite billions in investment

Angela Eagle, the environment secretary, has summoned water industry bosses to Whitehall after a report found that the environmental performance of the big companies has worsened despite investment.

“People are sick of excuses,” Dame Angela said, after the Environment Agency joined the Drinking Water Inspectorate, Natural Resources Wales and Ofwat for a joint report that rated eight of the nine water companies in England as “poor” or “requiring improvement”.

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© Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

© Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

© Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Several Mississippi homes have been purchased near datacenters and one resident said realtor outlined target to buy more than 400

People in a Mississippi neighborhood, many of whom dislike a nearby power plant central to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence ambitions, have received a stark offer – to sell their houses to his company and make way.

Real estate agents have been going door to door in Southaven, Mississippi, on behalf of xAI, touting a deal to purchase houses as long as the owners agree to not join a lawsuit against the company over the power plant’s noise. (Musk’s AI company officially became SpaceXAI in July and has lately been rebranded as SpaceXSI but to neighbors of the datacenter in Mississippi, it remains xAI.)

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© Photograph: Brandon Dill/The Guardian

© Photograph: Brandon Dill/The Guardian

© Photograph: Brandon Dill/The Guardian

The Biden administration had sought to crack down on methane leaks, a big driver of climate change. Those rules are now being scaled back.

© Susan Montoya Bryan/Associated Press

Palangkaraya is on the front line of an environmental crisis that has cloaked much of the region in a toxic haze

Chemical plants and other industrial facilities had been required to curb their toxic emissions. A New York Times investigation shows how they got out of it.

© Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

The president temporarily waived clean-air rules for industrial facilities that spew cancer-causing gases. Then his appointees worked to gut the regulations altogether.

This two-in-one machine cooled my stuffy home office and tackled dust and pollution coming off a main road