“That this House condemns the mismanagement and underinvestment which led to untreated sewage being discharged into English waterways for more than 3.6 million hours in 2023; notes that water companies in England have incurred debts of more than £64 billion and paid out £78 billion in dividends since they were privatised debt-free in 1989…” edm.parliament.uk/early-day-moti… “… further notes that water companies paid out £1.4 billion in dividends in 2022, even as 11 of them were fined in the same year for missing performance targets; objects to Ofwat's proposal to allow water companies to increase bills by an average of 21% despite overwhelming evidence of mismanagement…”

Watchdog executives @Ofwat and @EnvAgency had cosy dinner with water company bosses at private London club to discuss how to quell public anger over bill rises and sewage spills reveals @horton_official @guardian theguardian.com/environment/20…
The water quality campaigner and former Undertones frontman @Feargal_Sharkey said the private dinner was outrageous and an example of “regulatory capture”. He said: “In my view here we have a clear case of regulatory capture – industry and regulators, both of which are currently under enormous amounts of public scrutiny and criticism, acting in tandem trying to avoid anything remotely looking like transparency and/or accountability. This is pretty damned outrageous.” He also called for the chairs to resign.

Before Brexit the UK was signed up to the water framework directive requiring EU nations to ensure their waters achieved “good” chemical & ecological status by 2027. @DefraGovUK & @EnvAgency have shifted this target to 2063! We must fight this in 2023. amp.theguardian.com/environment/20… Abject failure @theresecoffey @pow_rebecca

“Not one English waterway, including rivers, lakes, estuaries & coastal waters is in good ecological & chemical health at present, with pollution from water treatment plants & agriculture the key sources of the damage.” @sandralaville

England’s rivers will continue to deteriorate unless the Environment Agency stops “shutting down” the public’s calls about pollution, according to an ex-employee who worked at the agency for three decades @phoeb0 theguardian.com/environment/20… Officers are told to ignore calls from the public and told not to look at possible incidents if the caller thinks they are lower impact, meaning they fall into so-called category 3 or 4. This has left staff “demoralised”

This is Wilson Brook flowing through Hyde Park before joining the River Tame to the east of Manchester. It is frequently grossly polluted. Incidents are reported to the @EnvAgencyNW by local MPs & angling groups but nothing happens. This is death by a thousand cuts @DefraGovUK Could you investigate @EnvAgencyNW? This tributary flows into the River Tame - a river blighted by sewage pollution with a major microplastics problem. The good people of Tameside deserve better. River corridors are the only accessible green spaces for many people in this region.

I now love German eBay. My lockdown treat - the history of life and landscape. I’ll tweet some details from this wonderful collection of palaeoart. Where to begin? 🌎🦕🌋 Forget PowerPoint and zoom - this is the future....

BREAKING: Another extinct ice age beast exhumed from the permafrost. Exceptionally well-preserved carcass of a juvenile woolly rhinoceros discovered in Yakutia. Its internal organs and stomach contents await investigation. Photos by Valery Plotnikov. siberiantimes.com/other/others/n… “The juvenile rhino with thick hazel-coloured hair and the horn, found next to the carcass, was discovered in the middle of August in permafrost deposits by river Tirekhtyakh in the Abyisky ulus (district) of the Republic of Sakha.”

Cold comfort: what can Arctic cultures teach us for our future survival? theguardian.com/artanddesign/2… “A circular map with the North Pole at its centre details 24 different cultural groups wheeling around the Arctic circle; some 400,000 people.”

A century or so ago, Serbian scientist Milutin Milankovitch hypothesised the long-term effects of changes in Earth’s position relative to the Sun are responsible for driving shifts in ice age climate climate.nasa.gov/news/2948/mila… “Specifically, he examined how variations in three types of Earth orbital movements affect how much solar radiation (known as insolation) reaches the top of Earth’s atmosphere as well as where the insolation reaches.”

“Our fear of wolves is out of all proportion to the danger they pose us.” Why landscapes need the wolf... theguardian.com/environment/20… “If the trajectory of the European wolf is dispiriting, it is also familiar. We have become well acquainted with graphs that plot the advance of humans against the decline of all else.”

Plant fossils reveal that atmospheric CO2 concentrations have not been this high for at least 23 million years and have never risen so rapidly newatlas.com/environment/co… “Lately we’ve been breaking a lot of records in terms of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. In 2016 the South Pole became the last region on Earth to exceed a concentration of 400 parts per million (ppm).”

WOW! Mass grave of at least 22 ice age giant ground sloths discovered on southwest coast of Ecuador gizmodo.com/mass-grave-of-… “Many of the bones were disarticulated and had the type of gouges to suggest trampling by other creatures after they had died. Something catastrophic caused 22 giant ground sloths—many the size of modern elephants—to perish at the same time and in the same place”

From the archive: #EarthDay2020

This time last year I saw the longest tusks in the world in the wonderful museum at Malia in northern Greece. These belonged to the remarkable Pliocene beast Mammut borsini 🇬🇷 The longest tusk is 5.02 m long and was excavated in July 2007. It is the second from right in this photo. This beat the previous record of 4.39 m excavated in 1997 (far left) #EarthDay2020

This will raise the spirits. Arctic foxes grow their own gardens to bring colour to the tundra 🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼 nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/05/1… “The underground homes, often a century old, are topped with gardens exploding with lush dune grass, diamondleaf willows, and yellow wildflowers—a flash of color in an otherwise gray landscape.” ❄️🦊

THIS IS EXCITING! The first articulated Neanderthal skeleton to come out of the ground for over 20 years has been unearthed at one of the most important sites of mid-20th century archaeology: Shanidar Cave, in the foothills of Iraqi Kurdistan arch.cam.ac.uk/news/shanidar-z “To have primary evidence of such quality from this famous Neanderthal site will allow us to use modern technologies to explore everything from ancient DNA to long-held questions about Neanderthal ways of death, and whether they were similar to our own.” #ShanidarZ

The Vogelherd horse – a miniature masterpiece from the ice age. This beautiful carving is the oldest known sculpture of a horse. Less than 5 cm long, it was crafted in woolly mammoth ivory with flint tools over 35,000 years ago. Image: Museum Schloss Hohentübingen, Tübingen 🇩🇪 I don’t like to show off but this is my Vogelherd horse biscuit cutter 🤓

This is the oldest known musical instrument. A Palaeolithic flute from Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany created from the wing bone of a Griffon vulture over 35,000 years ago #IceAgeMusic Find our more: “Bone Flute Is Oldest Instrument” #IceAgeMusic nationalgeographic.com/culture/2009/0…

Brian Fagan on Britain’s Little Ice Age historyextra.com/period/victori… “The eruption of Mount Tambora in southeast Asia in 1815 was part of a renewed burst of volcanic activity that brought besieging cold to Britain and much of Western Europe.”

Giant sloths in South America excavated ENORMOUS tunnels during the Pleistocene. These remarkable megaburrows preserve the claw marks from the beasts that engineered them. More details and image credits here discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/g… “Frank went back a few weeks later and crawled inside. It was a single shaft, about 15 feet long; at its end, while on his back, he found what looked like claw marks all over the ceiling.”

When this woodland flourished in west Wales just 45 centuries past, the last woolly mammoths were living on Wrangel Island. Image credits see link mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/s… Did I mention the Great Pyramid of Giza?