These long reads about everything from palm oil’s impact to Japanese knotwood to the power of people in a climate crisis are a few favourites from our archive. Composite: Rex/Shutterstock, Getty
These long reads about everything from palm oil’s impact to Japanese knotwood to the power of people in a climate crisis are a few favourites from our archive. Composite: Rex/Shutterstock, Getty
Dirty water, sentient trees and hope in a climate crisis: 10 environmental long reads to digest over Christmas
This year the Guardian Long Read series celebrates its 10th anniversary. Since we launched in 2014, we’ve run more than 1,000 pieces, on everything from Algerian sheep fighting to the trials and tribulations of Durex’s chief condom guy. Over the years, we’ve also run plenty of great environment stories, and for this special edition of Down to Earth we want to highlight a few of our favourites from the archive.
Below we’ve picked 10 of our favourite climate pieces to dig into over the Christmas break – but first, this week’s most important reads.
A picture of a Bristlecone tree Photograph: Piriya Photography/Getty Images
Mother trees and socialist forests: is the “wood-wide web” a fantasy?
In his essay, Daniel Immerwahr describes a new tree discourse, which sees them not as inert objects but intelligent subjects. Trees have thoughts and desires, the new theory goes, and they converse via fungi that connect their roots like fibre optic internet cables. Immerwahr identifies the source of this revelation as forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, whose idea of trees as intelligent and cooperative, even maternal, was so enthusiastically adopted in scientific books and popular culture. He goes on to show how this view, however romantic, is limited, and how Simard’s work provoked a quick backlash. But the bigger picture is why we so badly want this world of sentient trees to be true. Read the full long read here
The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear?
Over the past half-century, the global portion of people living in rural areas has decreased by almost a third. As people gravitate to the cities for work, or to escape the ravages of the climate crisis, vast areas of land are abandoned to be reclaimed by nature. We have become accustomed to reading about rewilding projects, but these are often labour intensive. In her Long read from last month, Tess McClure asks: what happens to the natural world when people disappear? In Bulgaria, she visits a village buried in vines, one of the places where monocultures have reduced nature’s capacity to fill the void. Bulgaria’s emptying rural landscapes offer us the chance to see what the land looks like after humans leave. Read the full long read here
How the world got hooked on palm oil
Palm oil is a wondrous product: it can enhance flavours, stabilise cosmetics, soften ice-cream, fry foods without spoiling, make shampoo more bubbly. But in his 2019 story, Paul Tullis documents how the so-called miracle ingredient insinuated itself into every corner of our lives. He shows how food conglomerate Unilever switched almost overnight to using palm oil in its products as an alternative to unhealthy trans fats, and the rest of the world followed. By the time its devastating environmental impact was discovered, consumers had decided they couldn’t do without it. There is no easy solution, but by understanding how the industry works, we can identify what the cost is. Read the full long read here
Dirty waters: how the UK’s Environment Agency lost its way
When the extent of the pollution of Britain’s rivers and seas became known, the public demanded answers. How was this allowed to happen? Had the water industry watchdog been asleep, mismanaged, corrupt? This investigation last June, by Hettie O’Brien, examines the extent to which the agency failed in its mission, and how – and why – it was allowed to fall into disrepair. Through interviews with insiders, O’Brien shows how this government agency was established to police environmental crimes while, at the same time, the government was “killing environmental law by stealth”. Read the full long read here
How to move a country: Fiji’s radical plan to escape rising sea levels
To look at the true impact of rising sea levels, Kate Lyons went to Fiji, in the south Pacific, which has more than 300 islands and a population of just under one million. Like most of the Pacific, its island shores are battered by storms and coastal villages are threatened by flooding. But Fiji has a plan. In her story, Lyons followed the first wholesale move of a coastal village to higher ground inland and heard about the many challenges involved. She also talked to residents of other villages in various stages of relocation, including one where male village leaders were left in charge of plans and the new houses were designed without kitchens. Read the full long read here
Laisana Bilosiliva with daughter, Lusiana at the Nabavatu Temporary camp site Photograph: Walter Gerard
The coalmine that ate an Indian village
Another story of communities displaced, this time by industry in cahoots with government, is Ankur Paliwal’s piece from 2022. In the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, villages and ancient forest have been destroyed to create a coalmine for Adani, a massive conglomerate owned by one of richest men in the world. In a story of “crony capitalism, oligarchy … regulatory capture”, Paliwal investigated secretive and intimidating government ministries as well as powerful private interests to uncover the tactics used by Adani to drive villagers off the land it wants to mine. After we published this story, we were contacted by Adani’s press office, which claimed, absurdly, that: “It is fair to say that the article by the Guardian is an attempt to challenge India’s energy security.” It is no such thing – it is a truly powerful piece of reporting by a dedicated journalist who spent more than a year trying to expose the truth. Read the full long read here
The plastic-eating bacteria that could change the world In this piece, Stephen Buranyi investigates what seems to be a major breakthrough in the battle against the plastic waste engulfing our planet. Buranyi has previously written about the public outcry against plastic pollution, and here he follows the discovery of a bacteria that can break down plastics and the scientific quest to turn that discovery into an industry-wide solution. The miraculous properties of microbes have been documented in the field of health, but this new research posists an enticing question: will highly evolved microbes really deliver us from the plastic crisis? Read the full long read here
‘A different dimension of loss’: the entomologists confronting the great insect die-off
Biodiversity has become one of the closely watched areas of environmental science as we deal with global heating and the manmade climate crisis. And none more so than the dramatic drop in our insect populations. In this article, Jacob Mikanowski speaks to scientists monitoring an ecological catastrophe that has come to be known as the sixth extinction. We should be spending less time worrying about the “cute and cuddlies” and focus on the invertebrates, says Terry Erwin, the legendary tropical entomologist. Read the full long read here
The war on Japanese knotweed
Samanth Subramanian is a master of finding great characters to anchor a story. Here he accompanies Gethin Bowes on his excursions to find and destroy the homeowner’s most hated weed. In Bowes, he finds a man who has spent years “playing whack-a-mole” against infestations of this mild-seeming but indestructible plant in building sites and private gardens and on agricultural land. Against knotweed’s “dastardly Darwinian tactics”, Bowes sets out armed with a tank of glyphosate, a controversial chemical weed killer that may or may not cause cancer, but definitely makes an impact on knotweed. But Subramanian also finds Koichi Watanabe, a mild-mannered photographer who delivers the story’s most profound thought: it’s not the knotweed’s fault. Humans are responsible – for setting knotweed loose across the planet, and then for losing their minds about its presence. Read the full long read here
Ten ways to confront the climate crisis without losing hope
Rebecca Solnit has become the voice of hope for a generation: a writer who shows that anger is of no use unless accompanied by action. This piece was written as part of our 2021 series, Reconstruction after Covid, looking at ways in which we could take the lessons of the pandemic and apply them in practical ways to build a better world. Solnit shows how despair can sap our ability to act, and how the narratives we create, whether negative or positive, matter. Solnit sets out 10 action points that are also points of mental discipline and attitude of mind: “Too many people like to spread their despair, saying: ‘It’s too late’ and ‘There’s nothing we can do.’ These are excuses for doing nothing.” Read the full long read here
