Environment | The Guardian

In 1860 the last, illegal, shipment of slaves to the US landed in this part of Alabama. Now hundreds of the largely African American residents are suing an industrial plant claiming it released toxic chemicals linked to cancerFrom the front seat of his truck, Joe Womack points out the site where the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to enter the US, landed in 1860, 52 years after it outlawed the international slave trade.Related: A civil rights 'emergency': justice, clean air and water in the age of Trump Continue reading...

RSPB says successful breeding season and kind weather could see many species faring well in this year’s Big Garden BirdwatchBlue tits, great tits, greenfinches and chaffinches are set to bounce back into British gardens this winter after a successful breeding season and “relatively kind” conditions.More than half a million people are expected to spend an hour this weekend spotting birds and other wildlife in the 39th year of the Big Garden Birdwatch, the world’s biggest wildlife survey. Continue reading...

Glapthorn Cow Pastures, Northamptonshire: The naked winter wood seems vast and empty, silent but for the thick patter of melt dropsSnow, an inch or two, but a broken layer, mainly because the chill wind has plastered vertically. Swirling flurries fall still, but as the afternoon progresses, snow shifts into sleet, then freezing rain. A flock of 100 fieldfare hunt in an empty sheep pasture, scrutinising the half-buried sward for morsels of invertebrate food. Their backs dip and hunch above the snow as they tug and flick at detritus and vegetation. They do not look like good invertebrate-hunting conditions to me, but I hope these Scandinavian visitors are more adept than I and manage to fill their bellies. The fieldfare are accompanied by a single starling and an individual mistle thrush who, hopping erect through the snow and grass, appears to have adopted the role of lookout. Continue reading...

More than 100 scientists have urged the museum to sever its ties with Mercer, one of Donald Trump’s top donorsThe American Museum of Natural History is under pressure to sever its ties to Rebekah Mercer, one of Donald Trump’s top donors who has used her family’s fortune to fund groups that seek to undermine scientists’ work on climate change.More than 200 scientists have put their names to a letter that urges the museum to “end ties to anti-science propagandists and funders of climate science misinformation” and axe Mercer from its board of trustees, a position she has held since 2013. Continue reading...

A major new study estimates 11bn pieces of plastic contaminate vital reefs and result in infections: ‘It’s like getting gangrene,’ scientists warnBillions of pieces of plastic pollution are snagged on coral reefs, sending disease rates soaring, new research has revealed. The discovery compounds the damage being done to a vital habitat that already faces an existential threat from the warming caused by climate change.Scientists examined 125,000 corals across the Asia-Pacific region, home to half the world’s reefs, and found 89% of those fouled by plastic were suffering disease. On plastic-free reefs, only 4% of the corals were diseased. Continue reading...

Government is being sued for third time to act quickly on illegal levels of toxic airAir pollution will continue to take a heavy toll on people’s health for many years to come unless the UK government is forced once again to improve its action plan, the high court has been told.

Companies seeking exploration rights need to prove they can bear clean-up costs as business secretary tightens consent rulesFracking companies must undergo financial health checks if they want to win a green light for their operations, the business secretary has said, as the industry faces another barrier to exploration in the UK.The decision comes after a Barclays-backed company hoping to be the first to frack in the UK for seven years suffered a blow when the business secretary, Greg Clark, said he was withholding consent because of the state of its accounts. Continue reading...

Anne Sommerfield, a director of Animals With Cameras, says ‘we were just the best candidates’

Kettle’s Yard loan scheme | Plastic packaging | Books on shelves | Bayeux tapestry | Bell-ringingIt is true that we no longer lend out the Ben Nicholsons and Alfred Wallises that Harland Walshaw was lucky enough to choose from as a student (Letters, 24 January), but we do still invite students in to Kettle’s Yard to choose a work of art, which for a small deposit and a modest fee they can hang on their walls for the year. And there are some beautiful works to choose from. We do love to hear the stories from those who enjoyed Jim Ede’s generosity when he was still living here.

In the face of nuclear weapons and climate change, scientists moved the clock forward, putting much of the blame on the Trump administrationThe risk to global civilisation is as high today as it has ever been in the face of twin threats, nuclear weapons and climate change, a group of leading scientists has announced, putting a significant share of the blame on the Trump administration.

New search for communities willing to host underground site for thousands of yearsLocal communities around England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be offered £1m a year to volunteer to host an underground nuclear waste disposal facility for thousands of years, as part of a rebooted government programme.

From the minuscule to the mighty, tree-dwellers to pond-swimmers, millions of beetle species reveal a wealth of information about the world we live in

Free refill points and fountains will be set up in shops, cafes and high streets in every English town and cityConsumers will be encouraged to refill their water bottles free of charge in tens of thousands of shops, cafes, businesses and water fountains in England under plans announced by the water industry.The national scheme aims to fight the growing scourge of waste created by single-use plastic by preventing the use of tens of millions of plastic bottles every year, as well as increasing the availability of quality drinking water. Continue reading...

Sandy, Bedfordshire: At the tree’s base, an autopsy of its last seconds was written in splits, snaps, rips and a broken heartWhen the last storm whipped through our valley it brought down the tallest tree on the river. An old Lombardy poplar, a spire without a church, it belonged to an age when planting poplars was popular. They were the leylandii of their day, for they shot up as fast as rockets and looked like them too. They were often grown in rows as windbreaks, though nobody much thought about old age and the wind’s revenge.For a day or so after, my eyes clawed at the air, looking for the absent shape of a tower that had been a crow’s nest for a magpie, a labyrinth for tits, a cricked neck. I saw only a wooded ridge, some houses, and sky – so much sky that it snuffed out the memory. For a day or so only, passersby stopped to inspect the toppled giant, as they might view the corpse of a beached whale. Continue reading...

Part of the Louvre museum is closed as the river is forecast to reach 6.1 metres by Saturday – three times its normal heightParisians have been warned to stay away from the river Seine as it continues to rise, flooding surrounding roads and causing disruption to the city’s transport network.As water levels touched 5.2 metres on Wednesday, the capital’s authorities said the river was expected to reach 6.1 metres (20ft) by Saturday. Continue reading...

UK survey finds 532 types – far more than older textbooks suggest should be out

A new-build programme would create an intolerable burden on communities into the far future, writes Andrew Blowers; while Rose Heaney wonders why our abundant renewable energy sources are being overlookedIn 1976, Lord Flowers pronounced that there should be no further commitment to nuclear energy unless it could be demonstrated that long-lived highly radioactive wastes could be safely contained for the indefinite future. Ever since, efforts to find a suitable site for a geological disposal facility have been rejected by communities (Wanted: community willing to host a highly radioactive waste dump in their district, 22 January).There is, therefore, little evidence to support the government’s claim that “it is satisfied that effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose of the waste that will be produced from new nuclear power stations”. Deep disposal may be the eventual long-term solution but demonstrating a safety case, finding suitable geology and a willing community are tough challenges and likely to take a long time. The search for a disposal site diverts attention from the real solution for the foreseeable future, which is to ensure the safe and secure management of the unavoidable legacy wastes that have to be managed. It is perverse to compound the problem by a new-build programme that will result in vastly increased radioactivity from spent fuel and other highly radioactive wastes which will have to be stored indefinitely at vulnerable sites scattered around our coasts. Continue reading...

As sceptics fretted over price, range and lack of charging stations, Australia was overtaken by the rest of the world. Now policymakers are being urged to jumpstart the industryIn Elizabeth in South Australia, they stood in a huge line, only three months ago, and spelled out HOLDEN for the helicopters. Thirteen weeks later, after the plant closed and the last car rolled away, the talk began of rejuvenation, a new owner and the promise of the electric.The proposal, from the British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta, to refit the old Holden plant to make electric cars is still just a suggestion, but it has captured the imagination of a country suddenly keen to talk. On Monday, the idea was backed to the hilt by the premier, Jay Weatherill, and the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union. On Tuesday, the federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, said the electric car would do to Australia “what the iPhone did to the communications sector”. Continue reading...

Glasgow to Edinburgh route among those affected as Met Office forecasts winds of up to 90mphThe Edinburgh to Glasgow railway line and five others in Scotland have been affected by landslides and flooding, leading to delays and cancellations.Landslides took place on Wednesday along two commuter lines, including the main route between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh, plus Glasgow Central to Carlisle and the Newcastle line via Dumfries. Continue reading...

Clean-up has collected more than 12,000 tonnes of plastic since 2015A beach in Mumbai is looking much cleaner thanks to the efforts of local people to remove a tide of plastic waste that appears on the shore.

Residents will have to queue for daily rations unless they drastically reduce consumptionCape Town residents may lose piped water to their homes within two months if they do not act to counter the effects of the worst drought to hit South Africa’s second city in almost a century.

Dan Brandon kept 10 snakes and 12 tarantulas in his bedroom and was said to be responsible ownerA lover of exotic animals died of asphyxia after his 2.4-metre (8ft) pet African rock python called Tiny wrapped itself around him, a coroner has ruled.

Dubbed the ‘Tesla of the canals’, the unmanned vessels will operate on Dutch and Belgian waterways, vastly reducing diesel vehicles and emissionsThe world’s first fully electric, emission-free and potentially crewless container barges are to operate from the ports of Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam from this summer.The vessels, designed to fit beneath bridges as they transport their goods around the inland waterways of Belgium and the Netherlands, are expected to vastly reduce the use of diesel-powered trucks for moving freight. Continue reading...

Peru’s Health Ministry found shocking contamination among the Nahua, but hasn’t published its full reportAn indigenous people living in one of the remotest parts of the Peruvian Amazon has been struck by a mystery mercury epidemic, according to an unpublished Health Ministry report dated 2015 and 2017 seen by the Guardian.The Nahua only entered into sustained contact with “outsiders” in the mid-1980s, which led to almost 50% of the population dying mainly from respiratory and infectious diseases. Today, numbering less than 500 people, the vast majority live in a village in the Kugapakori, Nahua, Nanti and Others Reserve established for indigenous peoples in “voluntary isolation” and “initial contact” in south-east Peru. Continue reading...

Trump’s decision to impose a 30% tariff will cost the US around 23,000 jobs and risks slowing the growth of clean energy, advocates warnDonald Trump’s decision to impose a tariff on imported solar panels will cost the US solar industry about 23,000 jobs this year and risks slowing the growth of clean energy that would help address climate change, renewable energy advocates warned.

Team of divers spent two days searching a reef, and hope more red handfish will be foundDivers in Tasmania have discovered a new population of red handfish, doubling the known population of the elusive and extremely rare fish and raising hopes that more may be found.Until last week the remaining population of red handfish, Thymichthys politus, was believed to be confined to one 50m long reef in Frederick Henry Bay near Hobart in south-east Tasmania. Continue reading...

Exclusive: government accused of hypocrisy as documents show opposition to urban waste planThe UK government is opposing strong new recycling targets across the EU despite its recent pledge to develop “ambitious new future targets and milestones”, confidential documents have revealed.

Heddon Valley in Devon to be haven for high brown fritillary, supported by lottery fundingA beautiful wooded valley on the Devon coast is to be the focus of a project to save the UK’s most endangered butterfly – the high brown fritillary.Conservationists believe changes to woodland management, such as the abandonment of coppicing, and climate change have contributed to the steep decline of the large, powerful, fast-flying butterfly over the last 50 years. Continue reading...

Public and private sector funds must increasingly pool resources to finance larger global sustainability and climate change projects, a new study showsTackling climate change and achieving the world’s sustainable development goals will require publicly funded and private sector banks and institutions to be far more willing to join forces to provide “blended” finance to projects, according to a new study.Blended finance is the term given to the use of public or philanthropic capital to spur private sector investment in projects aimed at achieving the sustainable development goals. Already, this market is worth about $50bn globally, but experts said on Tuesday this sum could double within the next three to four years. Continue reading...

Government tells 200 companies they have four years to stop sourcing gas from Groningen field after increasingly significant earthquakesTwo hundred of the Netherlands’ biggest companies have been told by their government to stop sourcing fuel from a major Dutch gas field within four years following a series of increasingly significant earthquakes.Extraction from the Groningen field, one of Europe’s richest sources of gas, is operated in a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, but has been capped in recent years by ministers due to seismic activity in the area. Continue reading...

New catalogue expected to stand alongside red list as an international means to fight extinction, by helping to stop biological invasionsA world registry of invasive species has been launched amid concerns that governments are not doing enough to tackle the rising threat of globalisation to biodiversity.The new catalogue – unveiled in the journal Scientific Data on Tuesday – is expected to become a pillar of international efforts to fight extinction alongside the “red list” of endangered species. Continue reading...

Restrictions aim to boost US manufacturing, but critics warn they will slow shift to renewable energy and increase consumer costsThe US president, Donald Trump, has announced steep tariffs on imported washing machines and solar panels, giving a boost to Whirlpool Corp and dealing a setback to the renewable energy industry in the first of several potential trade restrictions.The decisions in the two “Section 201” safeguard cases followed findings by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) that both imported products “are a substantial cause of serious injury to domestic manufacturers,” US trade representative Robert Lighthizer said. Continue reading...

A coalition of experts is asking the government to bring in a new Clean Air Act as ministers prepare to defend current plans in court this weekThe government is coming under renewed pressure to introduce a new Clean Air Act to tackle the UK’s toxic levels of air pollution.Ministers are due back in the high court later this week to defend their current plans which have previously been ruled so poor that they are illegal. Continue reading...

Officials say they need a faster ship to evade anti-whaling activistsJapan is to defy Australia and other nations with plans to replace its whaling fleet’s ageing mother ship, showing its determination to continue its annual expeditions to the Southern Ocean.

Company says regulator’s plans are ‘disappointing’ and its claim of £100m savings is too highNational Grid has hit out at Ofgem’s proposals over an £800m project to connect the Hinkley Point C power station to the electricity network, saying they put investment in the UK energy sector at risk.The Hinkley Seabank plan is an essential overhaul of the power network to send electricity from the new plant in Somerset – which will meet 7% of the UK’s demand – to the rest of the country.

UK energy system can cope with rise of battery-powered vehicles if 4-6pm slot avoided, says reportThe UK energy system will be able to cope with the extra demand caused by the uptake of millions of electric cars, provided drivers shift their charging to off-peak times, according to new research.The number of battery-powered cars on Britain’s roads will grow from around 120,000 today to 10m by 2035 and pass the 17m mark five years later, predicted Aurora Energy Research. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Mayor of London announces scheme to reduce packaging waste and improve access to tap waterA new network of drinking fountains and bottle-refill points is set to be rolled out across London this year as part of a plan to reduce the amount of waste created by single-use plastic, the Guardian has learned.Twenty new drinking fountains will be installed across London in a pilot scheme starting this summer, while a bottle-refill initiative, in which businesses make tap water available to the public, will be set up across five areas of the capital over February and March. If successful, it will be rolled out to the rest of the city in the summer. Plastic cups, bottles and cutlery will also no longer be available at City Hall under the plans. Continue reading...

Winter solstice, night lights and interesting islands are among the images captured by Nasa and the ESA last monthDust blowing out of the Copper River valley on Alaska’s south coast. The dust plume was likely comprised of fine-grained loess, which was formed as glacial ice moved over the area and ground the underlying rock into a powder. Dust storms in southern Alaska generally occur in late autumn, when river levels are relatively low, snow has not yet fallen, and the layers of dried, loess-rich mud are exposed to the wind. The Copper River - named for ore deposits found upstream - drains an area of more than 24,000 square miles (62,000 square kilometres) and is, by volume of discharge, the 10th largest river in the United States. Its delta forms one of the largest and most productive wetlands on the Pacific Coast of North America. Continue reading...

Australian grocery giant will join Bunnings to withdraw Yates Confidor from saleWoolworths in Australia has joined a growing list of companies to stop supplying a controversial pesticide linked to global declines in bee populations.On Tuesday the grocery giant announced it would join Bunnings in pulling Yates Confidor, a class of pesticide which some international studies have found damage the survival of honeybee colonies. Continue reading...

MCA publicises report asking governments to commit similar resources to carbon capture and storage as to renewablesThe Minerals Council of Australia has stepped up its advocacy for coal power in spite of its biggest member, BHP, saying it will leave the group unless it shifts its stance to become technology-neutral.On Tuesday the MCA publicised a report by the Coal Industry Advisory Board that called for governments to commit similar resources to carbon capture and storage as they do to renewable energy. Continue reading...

Allendale chimneys, Northumberland: The flue lines from the smelter in the valley can still be seen, bulging like veins across the frosty peatlandHigh above Allendale on this frost-sparkling January day, two stone chimneys reach up into a clear blue sky. Built in the 19th century, they exhaled fumes from horizontal flues that ran from a lead smelter more than two miles below on the valley floor. The flue lines can still be seen, bulging like veins across the fields. In places they have collapsed, revealing arched interiors where lead and silver would condense to be intermittently scraped off and recovered.

Townsville and Rockhampton councils to spend $34m on airport hundreds of kilometres from either cityOutspoken federal MP Bob Katter has questioned why two Queensland councils are paying $34m to build an airport to service a massive Adani coalmine, saying there is an “unpleasant odour” to the deal.In October Townsville and Rockhampton councils announced they would spend $18.5m and $15.5m respectively on an airport, hundreds of kilometres away from either city, at the Carmichael coalmine, as part of a funding deal with Adani. Continue reading...

Researchers have tracked Naya from eastern Germany into the Netherlands and now FlandersThe first recorded wolf on Belgian soil for at least 100 years has made her bloody mark.Farmers in north-east Flanders have been put on high alert after evidence emerged that Naya, a female originally from eastern Germany that has been making a pioneering trek across Europe, had killed two sheep and injured a third near the Belgian town of Meerhout. Continue reading...

2.6GW of capacity built in 2017 before subsidies ban industry says will make generation dearer

Nearly 60% of US carbon pollution comes from power and transportation, and power is already decarbonizing fastIn order to meet its share of the carbon pollution cuts needed to achieve the 2°C Paris international climate target, America’s policies are rated as “critically insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker. The Trump Administration has taken every possible step to undo the Obama Administration’s climate policies, including announcing that America will be the only world country to withdraw from the Paris agreement, and trying to repeal the Clean Power Plan.In 2020, the next American president will have to make up the lost ground and come up with a plan to rapidly accelerate the country’s transition away from fossil fuels. Currently, transportation and power generation each account for about 30% of US greenhouse gas emissions, so those sectors represent the prime targets for pollution cuts.

Holme Fen, Cambridgeshire: The trunks tangle back from both sides of the track, like wiry hair, their bark papery. Packed dense, this makes the forest look grey and odd

Iranian ship Sanchi went down carrying one million barrels of oil that is highly toxic to marine lifeThe spill from a sunken Iranian tanker off China’s east coast has more than trebled in size, just over a week after the ship sank in a ball of flames.

Malcolm Turnbull announces $36.6m will be spent on ‘supporting farmers stopping runoff’ to improve water qualityMalcolm Turnbull has announced a $60m rescue package for the Great Barrier Reef which includes research on developing “resilient” coral, and paying farmers to pollute less.The package, to be spent over 18 months, will also include an increased number of reef officers and vessels targeting crown of thorns starfish outbreaks. Continue reading...

Homes evacuated and rail services disrupted after snow gives way to warmer weather